Star Trek: Age of Wonder
by RobinsGirlWonder
Summary: A Romulan warbird skirmishes with the Enterprise during a routine survey of a mysteriously untraceable planet. When the captain leads an away team to the surface and is shot down, he finds himself face to face with no less than an angel. An angel who knows his face, but not his name.
1. The Champion of Themyscira: Teaser

**The Champion of Themyscira: Teaser**

 _Captain's Log: Stardate 2264.16_

 _Here we are again. Back in the saddle, as the old cowboys would say. Much to my chief medical officer's chagrin, we have resumed our five-year mission of exploration. The Enterprise-A might be a spiritual successor to the original, but in every way, she gleams and thrives in this new space as much as we have._

 _The crew is in good spirits, eager to find new planets to explore beyond the nebula. I had to turn down three separate xenobiology and archeology positions on our day before leaving spacedock, simply because we're already stocked as full as we can be. And, I have to admit, I've never been much for digging up dusty old bones. But, maybe it's been the time stuck station-side that reminded me why I'm out here. Why I fly. I'm as excited as the young crewmen are. Everyone has been at their peak performance._

 _Which is why we've reached our newest destination ahead of schedule. We've come upon a system in a unique part of the star's life cycle. It's been in the process of transitioning from a yellow star like our sun to a red star. Spock actually seems… almost excited… at the opportunity to survey the system and more importantly, the star's progress. Seeing his Vulcan equivalent of eagerness might make the trip completely worth it. Me? I'm hoping we might find something of interest on the class M planet in the 4-planet system..._

* * *

"Captain, we're coming up on the Eos system now." Sulu's voice cut through the hustle and bustle of the bridge like a knife.

"Onscreen, Mister Sulu." Captain James T. Kirk sat up in his chair as his helmsman brought the full array of the Enterprise's sensors onto the star Eos. The orb swam with plasma in varying shades of orange and red, occasionally arcing out towards the open space around it, as if a bird kicking its way out of its egg. Kirk found his mind drifting back to his Greek mythology. Eos… the goddess of the dawn. What a red dawn that would be on the planets in orbit...

"Oh, she is somesing else, isn't she, Ceyptin?" Chekov's awe was present in everything from his revered voice to the way his hands were reaching for the screen. He still had his stylus between his fingers. "A yellow star in ze midst of transition to a red star! No vone in all of Starfleet has seen zis!"

Jim chuckled, unable to hide his amusement as his young ensign's giddy scientific curiosity. "Easy, Mister Chekov. You might shake right out of that seat at this rate." His fingers moved across the console on his armrest, bringing up the various sensor readings. "Anything else of interest in the system, or are we just gonna stargaze all week?"

It was Spock who grabbed Jim's attention next from his console. "There are 4 planets in this system, one of which is class-M. Sensors are unable to penetrate interference from the atmosphere at this distance."

Jim turned to face him. "So we can go closer."

"I recommend that we wait to do so after our initial survey of the star. Otherwise, the new sensor array may not collect the full breadth of data available." The minor annoyance in his voice - at least Jim perceived it that way - made the captain grin.

"You don't want me to steal power from your shiny new toys, Spock, you could just say so." The eyebrow arched in response to Jim's needling, and thus the mission had truly started in earnest. "It's fine. We'll check it out after we complete the survey."

"I'm not sure we want to wait that long, Captain." When Uhura piped up, a hand still deftly on her earpiece, Jim stood and made his way over to her. "I'm picking up… something from the surface."

Jim rested a hand on the bulkhead above her console, watching her work. "Can you enhance the signal? Get us a bit more than a 'something?'"

His communications officer knew what she was doing, and she was clearly in the middle of doing just that when she flipped one last switch and stilled. "I think I'm hearing…. Subspace communications from the surface."

"Subspace?" His expression shifted to thoughtful, a bit confused. "What, like warp technology?"

"You need to have a moderate understanding of warp theory to implement subspace communications, so it would be logical that the civilization could potentially be warp-capable." Spock had a point. There could be someone on that planet.

"How come we didn't detect any lifesigns? We're not that far out."

"The planet's atmosphere is deflecting our sensor readings." Spock bent over to review his findings before turning back to Jim. "From this range, there is no definitive way to study the planet's atmosphere and determine the cause."

No sooner than the words had left the Vulcan's mouth, Jim's expression was proof that he should have thought better of it. "Then I guess we'll have to take a closer look." He smiled, tapping the bulkhead a bit before pushing off and making his way towards the turbolift. "Mister Sulu, I need a pilot. Chekov, you wanna check out the planet? I promise you can come back and trade notes with Mister Spock when we get back."

"Yes, sir!" Chekov scrambled to grab his padd and stylus as Sulu handed the conn off to an ensign in waiting.

"Captain, I would be remiss if I did not remind you that while Starfleet regulations do not explicitly forbid a captain from going on the away mission - "

Jim had already swept into the turbolift. "Oh, stop worrying, Spock. Let me have this one. You get your science, I want to seek out new life and new civilizations today. You have the bridge." The turbolift doors whooshed shut as Sulu and Chekov stepped inside. "What could possibly go wrong?"

* * *

As it turned out an hour later… a lot. A lot could go wrong.

"Shields down to 15 percent and dropping! Ceptyin, ve cannot sustain zis kind of damage for much longer!" Jim knew Chekov was just doing his job, but he really hated no-win scenarios. This was starting to feel a lot like one.

"Get us out of here, Sulu!" Jim shouted as they banked hard. The shuttle barrel-rolled out of the way of an ion blast, only for another arc of lightning to strike the port nacelle.

"I'm trying, but the atmosphere flooded the nacelles. I can't even get power to the thrusters." Sulu's hands shook on the controls. The _Galileo_ didn't want to pull up.

They hadn't seen exactly what had strafed across their bow, but the phaser blast had knocked out propulsion and caught them in the atmosphere of the planet. Jim had barely given the order to start scanning before they were now in the middle of it. Every red alert klaxon blared and the ship groaned as it barely held together.

The navigation console erupted in sparks and Sulu went tumbling out of his seat. On his feet in an instant, Jim rolled his helmsman over to find his face and shoulder covered in burns. Frantically, he felt for a pulse. One small blessing - Sulu was alive, but might not be if they couldn't land this bucket.

"Shields are _down_!" Chekov cried, hands frantically working to reroute power. "Ve are losing life support, communications, and ze engines are off-line! I cannot get us thrusters! Ve must abandon ze shuttle!"

Jim swallowed, thinking quick. "Can you get power to the transporters?" He grabbed Sulu and tugged him over towards the new, one-person transporter pad.

"Yes, Ceptyin! I can reroute ze power - "

"Good! Can we beam Sulu back to the Enterprise? Are their shields up?"

Chekov was shaking his head feverishly, trying to make sense of the readings in front of him. "I don't sink so, but I can't be sure."

"If the transport fails, how many patterns can this thing store in its buffer?" Kirk finished propping the prone Sulu fully onto the pad, then started to punch in the coordinates for the Enterprise's sickbay.

"Definitely one! Two, at most!"

Well… that settled that. Jim's expression steeled, and he quickly engaged the transporter. Sulu dematerialized, but that was no guarantee he'd reached the Enterprise. "Mister Chekov, get on the transporter pad. When you get back to the Enterprise, give them all the sensor data you collected since we started scanning, and you find a way to get through that atmospheric barrier!"

"But, vat about you?" Chekov asked as he struggled to stay upright in the pitching shuttle. He gripped the bulkhead until he was white-knuckled, but he genuinely seemed more worried for Jim than himself.

"That's why you need to get through the barrier. I'm gonna land this thing, and I'll need a pick up."

"But, I can help - " Chekov never got to finish the statement before Jim grabbed his arm and pulled him onto the transporter pad. He repeated the sequence to beam the stunned ensign off the shuttle.

Jim turned and made his way back to the front of the shuttle.

He wasn't a huge fan of gods or higher powers. But, he'd never wished he'd had a guardian angel more than right now.

The shuttle careened downward, punching through the atmosphere towards a sea so vibrantly blue, he thought for a moment, _Look at that. You found paradise, Jim._

The shuttle _Galileo_ plunged into the sea.


	2. The Champion of Themyscira: Act I

**The Champion of Themyscira: Act I**

WARNING. HULL BREACH. PRIMARY SYSTEMS OFFLINE.

Water. There was water rushing into the hull.

The red alert klaxons were still sounding, but they didn't really register. As a true Starfleet officer, Jim pulled himself up from his slumped position against the console, ignoring the way his head spun and his stomach whirled. He'd pride himself on his stalwart constitution once he found a way out of this.

Jim looked down at the console, then blinked a few times to clear his vision. Had he managed to keep the thrusters online? Judging from the way the shuttle's viewport was perilously close to a coral reef of some kind, that would have to be enough of a confirmation. The shuttle was at least near the surface of the water… relatively.

He forced his heavy limbs to cooperate long enough to try to get up. That was when his leg protested quite vividly. His ankle was pinned between the now wrecked helm console and the floor. "Oh, great…" He breathed, scrambling for his phaser. He'd have to cut the console to get his foot free, and the water level was rising. He could hear the _Galileo_ groaning under the strain. As the water rushed into the backend of the ship, it was buckling and threatening to pull the shuttle down into the ocean. Without good scans of the planet's surface, he had no idea if that was 100 fathoms or 10,000. He didn't really want to find out.

The _Galileo_ shuddered, and water that had begun to pool at his trapped foot rushed back towards the transporter. The metal screeched as he managed to fire his phaser and melt the console. He pulled his foot free and the sharp stab of pain actually helped clear his head more.

It couldn't have happened a second later, either. As soon as he stood, something broke along the top of the hull and water pummelled him from above. Swept up into the torrent of salt water, Jim was carried to the back of the ship and slammed into the transporter pad. He saw the helm chair pop free of its welding a fraction of a second too late, and he cried out as it slammed into him, pinning him against the bulkhead.

Water rushed ever higher, even as he tried to push the chair off of him. He knew it was a longshot. The water was too fast, it was too heavy, he'd had to try when the water finally leveled out. But, if he waited for that, he'd drown.

His breathing hitched, and Jim gulped one last breath of air before the water rushed over his head. He was so focused in his machinations, he almost missed the shadow above him. It wasn't until the light shifted above him again when he looked up.

The shuttle door opened and the water filled every available pocket of air left. The shuttle shifted again and the chair hit Jim in the stomach, forcing the air out of his mouth. _I am not gonna drown…_ He told himself, even as he gulped for air and found water instead. _Starship captains don't die in the sea…_

The pressure was lifted off his chest and he was firmly gripped in a pair of arms that somehow still felt gentle. _Go figure…_ He thought as a beautiful face framed by black hair whirling in the water entered his view. _Rescued by the natives…_ And then he saw nothing.

* * *

" _Kaneís den échei érthei poté apó tin atmósfaira."_

" _Aftó den simaínei óti eínai adýnato. Faínetai anthrópinos. Échei mia stolí."_

A man's voice. Far away… or maybe that was the concussion talking.

" _Tha boroúse na eínai stratiotikós."_

" _Í aníkei sto League, adelfí. Den boroúme na ypothésoume óti aftó simaínei vlávi.."_

A woman's voice. It sounded clearer. He couldn't place the accent, but, it felt vaguely familiar. And there was a sort of huskiness to it that coaxed him out of unconsciousness in the nicest way.

"He's waking up… " Was that Standard he was hearing? He could hear the way the same voices rolled over the words just like whatever tongue they'd had before. Was his universal translator still working? He was pretty sure his communicator had been damaged in the crash...

"Do not think I have not seen the same as you, Diana. That is not - "

"Thank you, Menalippe. But, that is not necessary."

Well, he was conscious. That second woman's voice had been deeper, harsher. World-weary. He recognized that tone. And it certainly made him want to pay attention. When he finally tried to open his eyes, he was assaulted by light and immediately squeezed them shut again.

"Oooh…." He groaned as he managed to force his eyes open again. He ignored the blistering headache and tried to focus on what was around him. He was prone on the floor, staring at the ceiling. Beneath him felt like cool stone. But, above him…. Above him was a masterpiece.

The ceiling was a crystalline structure, casting rainbow colors in one spot, then another. The crystals seemed to form a large pyramid structure. As the crystals grew larger, they dulled in color enough so that it provided a real ceiling to the great hall, not just a kaleidoscope. It reminded him of a cathedral with its stained glass windows. And something else...

Jim sat up slowly and turned his attention to what - and who - was around him.

Mostly women, he noticed.

Not all, but mostly.

He couldn't say for certain if they were human, but they certainly looked like it. The women were clad in what looked to be ancient Greek or Roman garb. Banded leather armor and deep burgundy cloaks that clasped over one shoulder, and several of them held spears. He noticed quivers of arrows, short swords. If it hadn't been for the unique architecture, he would have assumed he'd been transported back in time.

"Ooo….kay…" He breathed as he took stock of his surroundings and tried to get to his feet. He found he was stuck on the floor, however, as his foot was now bandaged and in a distinctly modern-looking foot cast.

"Who are you?" The man from before, one of the few men he had heard. After Jim took a second to evaluate the handful of men in the room, he realized they were dressed similarly to the women. But, the one who was speaking to him had something he recognized. It had been a _long_ time since he'd seen it. Hell, probably his academy days taking Pre-Federation history. But, the insignia on his cloak clasp was an icon. Triangular in shape. A house crest…

"Are you a Kryptonian?" Jim asked, utterly perplexed by his situation. Krypton had been destroyed centuries before humanity had reached the stars. But, there had been a few of them that came to earth in the 20th century. Before the Eugenics Wars. "Are those Kryptonian crystals? Was that how you built this place?" Had he found a colony?

"I asked first, son." The man had a chiseled jaw and more salt than pepper in his black hair. He was definitely in the latter half of his life, but by no means did he show it. He was built like the broad side of a barn, as his mom used to say. Of course, anyone calling Jim Kirk "son" was going to have an uphill battle with him, and it took everything in him not to visibly bristle.

Instead, he used it as an opportunity to re-establish his footing. "My name is James Tiberius Kirk. I'm the captain of… of the Enterprise." He couldn't guarantee that they had warp technology, especially after what he thought he heard. "My ship ran aground in your ocean and… and I thought I was drowning."

"You are no merchant sailor." The woman - Menalippe, based on the context clues and her voice - stepped closer to him. The tight pleat of her braid only drew her features to be more severe as she stared him down. "Do not lie to us. How did you come to be here?"

"I…" Jim stalled. Prime directive. _Dammit_. "I can't tell you that."

"Then, explain what manner of vessel brought you here."

"I…"

"You cannot tell us that, either." That voice. The one that had pulled him from the darkness. It matched the face he'd seen in the water just before going out. Jim's jaw went a bit slack. He was pretty sure he was staring at the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

And Jim Kirk had seen a _lot_ of beautiful women.

Unfortunately, she looked anything but thrilled to see him. At the moment, she sounded bored, or maybe resigned. She was clad in gold-tinted leather with an eagle cut into the chest. Her dark hair cascaded over the fur of her cloak collar, and upon her forehead was a diadem with a starburst in the somehow both seemed regal and wise, but still young and fierce. He felt like he'd seen her in a dream somewhere before, but couldn't place it. Instead, he tried to think of the tongue-lashing he'd get from Bones if he ended up nearly getting killed because he flirted with some sort of warrior woman the wrong way.

"You're right. I… can't." Jim cleared his throat and tried to get to his feet again. It took some doing, but he was able to get his good foot under him and push back up so he was barely putting pressure on his bad foot. "My people have strict rules about what we share with other cultures."

"I plucked you from the sea." The warrior woman said, stepping down from the golden shell throne behind her. The crowd had already given way to her a bit, but now that she was approaching Kirk, they parted for an even wider berth. "I know that your ship came from space. We saw it breach the barrier. So… James Tiberius Kirk. It is in your best interest to tell me the truth. I could compel you to, if necessary, but I do not think it is."

Jim kept eye contact with her, even though he felt like it was almost disrespectful to. He didn't want to offend an entire planet on his first day, but if he was being honest, he couldn't pull his eyes away. "I've been trained to resist torture, so I wouldn't recommend it. A man of my profession has to have a strong constitution."

The woman smiled as she circled around him. There was an element of sadness to it. He found himself wishing he knew what he'd said. "The Amazons do not torture."

"The Amazons…" He repeated after her, rolling the word around for a moment.

She nodded and returned to her position at the stairs. He knew a display of authority when he saw one. But, she'd come down to his level as well… Maybe she was more curious than angry? He couldn't really tell.

Jim took another look around, then back to her. "Where exactly am I? Who are you? How do you speak Standard?"

The woman stood a bit straighter, her expression level and somehow both youthful and wise beyond years. "You are on Themyscira, James Kirk. And I am Diana, Daughter of Hippolyta. And I am Queen of the Amazons."

The pronouncement seemed to carry real weight. Not just for the others in the room, but it gave Jim goosebumps. Not that he'd ever admit it, but she just conveyed gravitas that gave him pause. He wasn't intimidated, per se…. But definitely fascinated.

And she was a queen. So, he was speaking to the leader of this group. He knew how to do that. "Well, then, your highness… thank you for what you did. I would probably have died if you hadn't arrived." He glanced down at his uniform and momentarily lamented that his first interaction with their leader was after she'd dragged him out of his shuttle with a ripped uniform. Maybe if he could get back to the _Galileo_ , he could find the sealed compartments with his emergency uniform. "I would like to start over, if I may."

Diana, Queen of the Amazons, rose an eyebrow at him. "Very well."

Clearing his throat and standing as straight as he could, given the injury, he met her eyes and smiled. This part was easy. "Your Majesty, I am Captain James T. Kirk. I am the captain of the Enterprise, and while I cannot tell your people great detail about how I arrived, I would be very curious to learn more about your culture, your people, and your technology. We follow a prime directive that dictates we cannot interfere with the development of any other species or culture unless they have met a certain technological evolution. But, what I can tell you, I will do so freely."

"And where are you from?" Diana pressed. "You are not of this planet."

No harm in at least mentioning where he was from. Jim knew most aliens heard it and dismissed it. And if a culture that called themselves the Amazons _had_ heard of Earth, well… "No, ma'am. I'm from a place called Earth. Little town in Iowa."

"Iowa." That was the man that had given him the staredown before. "So, you're an American?"

"Technically, sure, but we're more unified. I don't really talk about being an American so much as a member of a larger, global community."

For some reason, that brought a very warm smile to the older man's face. He glanced back at the queen, then motioned to the people behind Kirk. "Senators, if you don't mind, the Queen and I would like a few minutes alone with our friend from Man's world."

Jim didn't bother to hide his relief when the chamber cleared. Now, it was just Kirk, Diana, and the big guy. "You _are_ from earth." He said.

"In another life, yes. Kansas."

Immediately, Jim's curiosity got the better of him. "I don't understand. How are you _here_?"

"It is a story for another time." Diana made her way down off of the dias. "Kal and I must know what you know about the barrier, Captain Kirk." There was a way she kept saying his name, as if she needed to commit it to memory for some reason.

Kirk furrowed his brow. "I don't know that I can tell you anything of use. Even if you're using Kryptonian crystal technology - which I have not forgotten, by the way - " He pointed to Kal's insignia on his chest. "It may not make any sense to you."

"Just because we dress like an older Earth culture doesn't mean we're in the dark ages." Kal replied. Now that he wasn't playing the tough guy, he'd relaxed considerably. There was a warmth to him, an openness that felt almost infectious.

"The subspace communications field we detected." Jim grinned. "Spock was right. You're practically at warp. You want to travel in space."

"We've thought about it, but most of the Themyscirans don't want to leave."

The grin faded. "So, what? You created the barrier and you want to know how I got through it to seal it back up?"

Diana nodded solemnly. "It was the only protection this place has. And now, it may be gone. We lost the technology when a number of our scientists died."

"If I can get back to my ship, we might be able to repair the damage." Jim knew it was a longshot, and most certainly a report he would not want to have to justify, but, it would be worth it if these people wanted to be left alone.

"That is impossible." She said. "No vessel can leave the planet. I don't have that level of trust in the gods anymore." Her gaze lingered on Jim for maybe a moment too long. She was searching for something, but he couldn't tell what. And then she turned to leave. "I leave you to Kal's care. You are welcome here as long as you wish to be. Perhaps we'll find a solution after rest and a meal."

Kirk watched her go, but there was something about the way she walked. She was too fast, it was almost like she was running from him. "Your Majesty." He called. She paused, and he took it as his opportunity to speak. "I can't thank you enough. I mean that. I'll do everything I can for you. And your people."

He had hoped for more than a curt nod before she continued her stride, but it wasn't the first time he'd struck out at building bridges with other cultures. Instead, he turned to Kal and tried to at least make inroads where he could. "So… Kansas, huh? Metropolis or Topeka?"

* * *

It was him.

And yet it was not him.

Those eyes were his, the face was his, the voice was his. The _smile_ was his.

But, that was not Captain Steve Trevor.

Diana took a deep breath as she watched the sun begin to set. Its hues had changed from the familiar yellow to the darker oranges a century ago. But, still. It had been a century of this place in idyllic form. She and Kal were sure that they could make the best of the circumstance. They could leave Earth behind. Even as the sun turned red and he began to age, he had convinced her that while they had not planned to leave Man's world, perhaps it was in good hands.

And then the world she left behind had come crashing into this world bearing the face of the last man to pull Diana from Themyscira. Seeing his face had felt as though Hades himself gripped her heart and held it tight: At once cold as the River Styx and as painful as the talons of the Furies.

"Gods, you are cruel…" She whispered to no one in particular. She half-heartedly hoped that her father and siblings could hear her. Somehow. Across time and space.

It had taken time to integrate the refugees and families of men and women who wished to live on Themyscira after what had been fondly referred to as the Golden Age of Heroes. Now, they all continued the traditions of her mother and their forebearers. Each man and woman that had come to Themyscira did so swearing to uphold the principles of the Amazons. Many of them had turned to the gods that Diana knew to be fickle, cruel and unkind. It had been a blessing to think them dead. For a time. But, when she knew the truth, she had never felt more alone.

Perhaps one of them was punishing her now. It was no hyperbole. It could be a trick. It would not be the first time that someone had used her memories of Steve against her. But… it would be the most cruel. To have such a cruel reflection arrive after so long…

"The wounds that take the longest to heal are the ones that are reopened in each new battle." The voice that pulled Diana from her reverie knew the depth of her pain.

Diana turned to face Menalippe. The older Amazon had come to join her on the balcony overlooking the capital city. The company was appreciated, but meant that Diana needed it. Even if she didn't think so. "I take it you have not killed our guest."

Menalippe didn't bother to smile. Diana expected it was two-fold: she didn't appreciate the joke and she was more worried about her queen. "He is not your Captain Trevor, Diana. I know how it feels to see someone you love taken from you. And to see them everywhere you go. I know it's tempting."

"I know it's not him," Diana breathed, a bit more harshly than she intended. When she realized how she sounded, she huffed and reached up to unclasp the cloak that had once belonged to her mother. In a moment, the woman was at her side, gently taking it from her to hang. "You don't need to do that."

"Diana, you are the Queen of the Amazons. You deserve attention. And you deserve respect."

"I never wanted this." For a moment, in the quiet of the royal chambers, Diana let her guard down. She slowly sank onto one of the lounges, her hands subconsciously running along the gauntlets on her forearms. It was as if she hoped the answers would come from them. In the past, they had. Her godhood had eventually shown itself through her bracelets. That fateful day on the field, sparring against her aunt Antiope, the greatest Amazon warrior they had ever seen. Menalippe beside her, helping her lover up….

Diana's mind slipped further into the memory. She could feel the salt on her skin, Antiope's blood on her hands as she tried to impart last words of wisdom to Diana.

 _Go… Diana… go…_

"He says he has a ship. That he thinks he could restore the shield on the planet." She wanted to think of something other than what 'he' looked like. "He is a captain of some sort of starship. He is the product of the world Kal and I left behind."

"But, _he_ looks like your captain. And so it hurts all the more." Menalippe took a seat beside her and reached out, taking her hand. She squeezed it comfortingly. "You have loved these people as your mother would have. As I have. As Antiope had. But, you do not let yourself love. Not anymore."

"I am not of man's world," The woman once called godkiller muttered. "I will not age. They will. Even Kal has aged. In the last hundred years, I have had to face that I will be surrounded by the ashes of my people." When her companion opened her mouth to interrupt, she pressed on. "And it may be that my people blossom as a forest, spreading over every inch of this planet, thriving. But, there will come a day when I will no longer hear your voice but in the corners of my mind. Just like my mother…" Diana's voice caught, and she could feel the sting of tears in her eyes. "Just like so many others I have already lost. This is how I shall love now. I shall be the queen my mother wanted."

Menalippe sighed. She clearly was not satisfied with the response. She rose, standing before Diana so she could rest her hands on either sides of her face. It was a gesture that her mother had done so many times before. _The wounds that reopen do not heal..._ she had to agree with her oldest friend.

"Your mother would not have wanted you to close off your heart. She did the same to you. She hid you from Ares, fearful of the unknown. She was proud that you rose to meet adversity. You do not have to be queen in this way. Just, be careful that you do not fall into the depths of memory."

With that, she left and Diana was left alone in her chambers.

Slowly, she stood and made her way to the mirror of polished metal near the wardrobe. It had been some time since she had truly taken a moment to look at herself.

She wore the garb of her mother. She spoke as her mother would have in the Senate. She wore the diadem of Antiope but carried it like the diadem of Hippolyta.

But, she would never be her mother.

Diana had never felt more alive than when she wore a different armor. But, that armor had been locked in a trunk and would never be seen again.

This was a new age.

This age had men who travelled space and crashed upon her planet.

This age held no wonder.

It did not need Wonder Woman. It did not need Diana Prince.

And no ghost from her past could change that.


	3. The Champion of Themyscira: Act II

**The Champion of Themyscira: Act II**

At some point in the last four years of galactic exploration and diplomatic negotiation, Jim had learned to enjoy waking up early. There had been that time - just before Altamid - when he felt like space travel had lost that rhythm of "early" versus "late". It only mattered how many hours he'd logged before falling asleep.

But, after he'd lost the _Enterprise_ , he found himself longing for that freedom to fly, to set schedules that meant late nights and early mornings had no meaning. And now that he was watching the red sunrise over Themyscira's horizon, he knew why. Sunrise here meant sunset somewhere else. Having his ship meant he could see every sunrise and sunset on this side of the galaxy. Having his ship meant he could help people in need, whether from themselves or from others.

Which was why he needed to get back to his ship. He didn't buy Kal's explanation of why they couldn't leave the planet. Not entirely. The older man had explained that they'd once been on Earth, but wouldn't say when that was or how they got here. And while he'd mentioned that the scientists who apparently created the atmospheric barrier that kept Themyscira almost entirely untraceable, they still had scientists who understood subspace communications.

They were practically warp-capable. They were an Earth colony that had formed a completely independent society and had never left the planet simply because they chose not to.

But, there was something that Jim was missing. A big piece of the puzzle.

If all he needed to do was solve it was agree to fix the barrier, then he'd already made that commitment. He just needed the shuttle to do it. And maybe some of Kal's scientists could help him piggyback his signal off of their subspace relays…

The clash of metal reached his ears from the room that he'd be given to rest in. Jim strained to peer through the open window to pinpoint the sound, but he couldn't quite find the source. It did mean one thing, though: He wasn't the only one awake this early.

Kirk made his way towards the door and caught his reflection in the mirror. He scowled. This uniform had seen better days, and even though Kal had offered to leave him clothing, he wasn't entirely sure he wanted to trash the only uniform he had. It might send the wrong message to the queen: that he'd given up.

Making sure to at least get his hair down to presentable levels - he woke up looking like he'd stuck his finger in an EPS conduit - he stepped out of his room and made his way down to the courtyard. The pain in his ankle was gone, so he could at least walk with a minimal limp from the cast. It hadn't taken long for him to get the lay of the palace after Kal's tour. Even if the man wouldn't tell him more about his time on earth than just his days in Metropolis, he had given Jim ample opportunity to grow familiar with the architecture.

Even so, Jim wandered for several minutes before he could track the sound of metal ringing against metal to an open field and sought out the source.

Not for the first time since crashing here, Jim was left a bit speechless.

He'd read his military history. He knew how the Romans and Greeks had trained - in theory. He personally loved riding horses when he had the rare opportunity, but he'd never seen anyone train for battle on them. And this was most certainly a training ground.

Arrows flew from quivers, free as birds, and struck targets in mid-air. The target reminded Jim of old Velocity games at the Academy. Cadets would take turns hitting a hovering target with their phasers. The technology the Amazons were using looked identical.

There were faces he recognized as well. There was a broad-shouldered Amazon who looked twice the size of her two opponents, but she stood against them bare-handed. It didn't take long to see why. She had them both down and flat on the ground in no time. Jim found himself striding towards the pitch to get a closer look at the skill and sheer discipline he was witnessing.

A flash of light caught his gaze again, and Jim paused in his walk. He turned towards the glint in his vision.

The Queen was fighting. She wore a variation of the armor he'd seen her in yesterday, only she lacked the cloak. The sunlight had reflected off of her gauntlets as she pulled her sword to fight her own opponent: Kal.

Kansas sure knew how to fight back. Crossing his arms over his chest, Jim went to find a spot to watch out of the way. He wasn't in a rush to disturb them. He wanted to understand these people, how they thought, how they built strategy.

The two traded blows with such ease that the way sparks flew from their weapons seemed impossible. They were so _relaxed_ , yet focused. Queen Diana's blows had almost no force applied to them, yet when she met Kal's blade, the weapons buckled visibly.

"You're not doing yourself any favors, Diana…" Kal grunted after a particularly rattling blow. "By going easy on me…" Kal blocked another blow, then another. He managed to land an elbow against Diana's stomach, and the queen backpedaled to recover. "Harder! Get it out of your system now!" Jim winced in sympathy, but it was unnecessary.

No sooner than she'd regained her footing, the smirk that the queen gave Kal suggested mischief and eagerness that meant trouble. Jim chuckled a bit. He liked that kind of trouble.

Unfortunately, he must have been a bit louder than he thought, or maybe his intent gaze was somehow sensed by the monarch, because she turned and caught his eye.

Immediately, the smile faded and his heart sunk a little. Forget the sunrise, that smile was more than enough to keep him going, and for some reason, he was the reason it kept disappearing.

He'd have to start the apologies early today. "I'm sorry." He held a hand up in surrender. "I didn't mean to interrupt, your highness. I just… I could hear this from my room and wanted to see what was going on. It's quite the operation you have here."

Kal sheathed his sword as Diana did the same. The queen strode over to Jim, the split long panels of her skirt showing off her athletic legs and the knee high armored boots. Jim made sure to keep his wandering eyes firmly locked on Diana's face, even if the expression still looked stony. "Good morning, captain." Kal said with a smile.

"Good morning." He flashed the other man a grin before looking back at Diana. "Again, you didn't have to stop on my account - "

"What I do is not up to you." She replied, waving the sentiment off. Her expression still seemed so severe, and Jim had a feeling it had something to do with him. "I was done. I didn't particularly feel like summarily defeating a friend in combat this morning." She glanced back at Kal. "Even if you would have absolutely had it coming to you."

The laugh she received indicated it was an old pattern between the two of them. _How long had they been on this planet?_

Jim tried to use the opportunity to send another smile her way. She relaxed - a miniscule fraction - but it was something. "Well, then, I hope I'm a welcome distraction. Or at least one that will be out of your way as soon as I can contact my ship. And I was hoping you could help me with that."

Diana rose an eyebrow and began to walk out of the pitch. She motioned for him to follow, which he gladly did. "How so? As I said, no one leaves the planet."

"I don't know exactly what you've attempted with warp travel, but I can guarantee my thrusters were still working before I hit the water. If I can get to my shuttle, get it out of the water, I can - I hope - access the computer core and power a few vital systems long enough to reach my ship."

"You just said your shuttle was underwater." That was Kal, who had joined them. "What makes you think any of it will still have power?"

"Our technology is very resilient, my chief engineer assures me." Jim cracked a smile at the thought of Scotty. "In fact, he frequently tells me I have the best ship in the fleet, so, I'd like to think that means something."

"And if we are able to retrieve your shuttle, what will you tell your ship exactly?" Diana was leading them away from the palace. He wasn't entirely sure where, but it wasn't the route he'd taken the day before.

"Obviously, they'll want to send a rescue party. But, since I don't know what sent the shuttle down, until I can send them my sensor data, I have no guarantee they can avoid the same fate. But, I can ask them to determine how we can seal the barrier for your people." Jim knew he was saying what they wanted to hear, but he couldn't stop himself. "Although, I admit, I hope you don't want to do that. I think you would be very surprised with what's happened since you left."

Diana paused, and she turned to face him. "What are you suggesting, Captain Kirk?"

Thankfully, this was Jim's favorite part of the pitch. "I'm suggesting that you open the barrier, allow me to reach out to my commanding officers and make the case that you're warp-capable. You could even come with me, see the galaxy and be an ambassador to your people." Jim had to be very careful not to point out how much of that _you_ was specifically directed to the queen and not just her people. He desperately wanted to show her the world they left behind. He wanted to get past those walls she seemed to have erected at every turn. "The Federation has resources and technology that would benefit Themyscira."

"We've been just fine on our own this long," Kal remarked.

"And I'm sure you'd be fine if we just put the cork back on this bottled city." He had heard similar arguments before. "But, it's an option."

While Kal seemed against the idea, Diana had begun to walk again. And this time, she was walking faster. "Then let us retrieve your shuttle and see what options are available to us."

* * *

Diana could tell that Kal was upset with her. If not with her, he was certainly upset about her change in attitude towards the earth captain. If it was a trick played upon her by one of the gods, then she would not give them the satisfaction of thinking that this man was Steve. But, she had to consider James T. Kirk's offer even when they reached the shores of the western sea.

If they could leave the planet, then maybe it would be for the best. Of course, that would mean she would have to relinquish her rule, but it was a title she never wanted. She had been the Princess of Themyscira for so long, the mantle of Queen felt like an ill-fitted pair of boots.

But, she could not consider it in earnest until they had retrieved the shuttle. Once the trio reached the water, she turned to Kal as she unbuckled her scabbard and set it on the ground.

"Kal, can you help me?"

Kal pursed his lips a bit. "Diana, you're not serious."

"I can do it on my own, if you think it's too much. I'm giving you an opportunity to stretch your legs." She was goading him on, hoping that good-natured ribbing would cool her friend's temper. He had become her brother in so many ways over the years. It would not do to have him turn away from her now. Especially if she was considering…

Kal sighed and walked over to her. "I can handle it."

Kirk furrowed his brow as the two of them began to wade into the water. "Am I missing something? I was thinking more that we'd use a pulley system or - "

"Just sit tight, captain. We'll be right back." Kal said with a smile, then dove into the water alongside Diana.

Together, the two of them swam down to the wreckage of Kirk's vessel.

Again, Diana was reminded of how she'd made this plunge before to save the captain when he'd been drowning in the back compartment. And again, she had to push away the ever-present thought that this was the same event that had brought Steve to her.

 _Three hundred years, and yet that feels like a blink of an eye. It was only yesterday…_

There was so much about her heritage that Diana had not yet understood when she first came to Man's World. It had never occurred to her that as an Amazon or a goddess, she had spent thousands of years on Themyscira, aging slowly in an ageless place. It had never occurred to her that to see one man die was to see them all die. If not at first, in slow fits and starts.

In the depths of the sapphire blue ocean, Diana found herself recalling Chief's face. His expression when he'd finally secured enough money to buy back a parcel of his family's land.

She thought of Sammy. The stories he could tell…

She thought of Charlie. Sweet Charlie and his songs. How she had learned to sing those ballads to him as he was taken before them all in a London blitz, languishing in a hospital.

She thought of Steve.

 _I wish we had more time_ ….

Time was all Diana ever had. Apparently, it was enough time for the wheel of fate to turn and to bind another thread to Diana. Perhaps it was of the same color and wool as Steve Trevor, perhaps it was not.

Kal swam to the front of the shuttle. Its nose was still firmly lodged in the coral. She could see the red tinge of his eyes as he struggled to bring forth the heat vision that had once been so easy. As the star grew more red, the more his powers had faded. It would only be a matter of time now.

The coral broke off and the shuttle buckled.

Swiftly, Diana swam beneath the shuttle and braced it so that it wouldn't keep falling. Once she could feel Kal's hands on the vessel, the weight of it was pulled away from her. A quick glance upward told her that Kal had decided he would show off.

Diana popped back up to the surface for air just as Kal flew above the surface of the water, the shuttle over his head, and then hovered to gently place the vessel on the sand. The look on Kirk's face was priceless. It was so like Steve but… not. It was unique in this joy.

"You _are_ a Kryptonian." Kirk pointed to the clasp still on Kal's armor, then eagerly rushed forward. "Not just any Kryptonian. You're Kal- _El_. You're _Superman_."

Diana had expected her friend to smile at the recognition. Instead, he scowled. The expression was made all the more severe by aged countenance and the day of scruff he had acquired.

"I was. Not anymore." Kal swept his hair back and wiped salt water off of his face before stepping away.

It didn't seem to deter Jim in the slightest. "There were only a handful of Kryptonians that ever made it to earth and you were one of them. And you're _here_? You went missing in the 2040s."

"And?" Diana's effort to cheer Kal up had backfired. He didn't want to think of his time on earth. At least she could look upon her time there with joy and hope. _He still sees only Lois…_

"Are you kidding me? 'And?' It's 2264." Kirk turned to Diana, an unrepentant grin upon his face. "You have to tell me everything."

"What you've heard about me from your history books is all you need to know."

"Please, Kal - " Kirk stopped when Kal shot him a withering glance. He didn't seem to be fazed, he just could tell that he was overstepping. Instead, he rose his hands in surrender and began to step towards his shuttle. "Okay… all right. I understand." He turned to face the now ripped open shuttle door, then back to Diana. "Thank you both. With any luck, I can reach the Enterprise in a few hours."

Once he disappeared into the shuttle, Diana could see Kal's shoulders slump slightly.

"Kal, you know what we did on Earth. They called it the Golden Age of Heroes. Is it really so hard to believe that he would know you by your gifts?"

Kal bristled at the parlance. "It's been two hundred and twenty years since we left. There have been other heroes."

"Earth is your _home_." Diana insisted, although she already knew what he would say to her.

" _Lois_ was my home. And she is gone." Kal's voice shook as he turned to face her. His fist was clenched, and there was a raw pain in his voice that she knew all too well. "You left, too."

"But, not because I lost him." Diana's tone was soft. She understood, but she could not condone it. "What about your son? Conner - "

"Conner thinks his father abandoned him or that he died, but he doesn't need me." Kal could not be reasoned with.

"Kal, he would not feel that way. Why don't we return? You could see him, we could tell Kirk who we are - "

"Because there's no point, Diana. And you _know_ that. You're just taken in because he looks like Steve!" The moment Kal let that arrow fly, they both knew that it had been a critical blow, and one that they both regretted.

Diana's expression steeled. "He is not Steve. And I am not a foolish girl naive in the ways of mankind. When have I ever given you reason to doubt my intentions? It is our duty to protect those who cannot fight for themselves. I am trying to consider how it could benefit my people. _Our_ people. Refugees that you helped me train. And they cannot be held back forever by this planet. Or me."

Kal opened his mouth, but whatever he wanted to say, he let die on his lips as he met her gaze. He sighed, shaking his head. "I don't want to fight with you. I'm…. going to take a walk. We'll talk later." He turned and purposefully strode off back towards the capital city.

Diana let him go. Anger would not solve their disagreement. It never did. That was a lesson that took Bruce far too long to learn in his life.

Instead, she turned her attention to what she could: the shuttle and the captain within. Kal had struck a weakness within her that she could not ignore. She did not know enough about this captain to trust his intentions. If she entertained this notion of leaving for the stars, she had to know him and his heart.

By the time she stepped into the cockpit, she was surprised to find that he had changed. Instead of his bright gold uniform shirt, he was in a blue uniform and jacket that held the gold bars on the shoulders. That jacket was unzipped and he was busy trying to pull something free from under a console.

The technology was very similar to what they had developed on Themyscira, using a mixture of the Kryptonian technology and what they had taken from earth. But, they were essentially on two different evolutionary paths. Again, that instinct that prompted her to leave Themyscira all those years ago was pushing at her, telling her that this was worth exploring.

But, she was still the queen.

"Can I help?" She asked as she came around, sitting on the only other available chair. The one she had pulled off of him was at the bottom of the sea now.

"No, but thank you for the offer." Kirk said with a grunt as he forcibly yanked a metal panel open. It came free with a clunk, but she couldn't see what he was doing. She desperately wanted to, so instead of remaining in her chair, she took the moment of silence to get up and move until she could see.

"What are you doing?" She finally asked. To his credit, he barely startled, but it was clear he hadn't noticed she'd moved to the other side of him.

"Uh…" He grabbed a few tubes and pulled them up to the console so he could look them over. "Well, I am hopefully going to reroute power from what's left of the primary core to my comms array. If I can do that, then I think I can use the subspace relays you've built on the planet to boost my signal enough to reach the _Enterprise_." As if he could tell that she would be more comfortable watching from the other chair, he shifted towards it and motioned for her to have a seat again.

She did so, then watched as he tried to connect a couple of the tubes together. "This shuttle has been submerged in saltwater for a day. But, you think it has power?"

"Oh, yeah. We steered away from electrical and combustible power a long time ago. I'm sure Scotty could give you the specifics on how and why it works, but basically…" Kirk finished attaching what he wanted, and a console lit up in front of them. "Just about everything is safe from water and vacuum. Plasma sucks and I've had nebula leak into the ship before. That was rough, took weeks to get the stains out." He winked at her, then went back to looking at his console.

The gesture made her heart pound for a moment, and she smiled before looking anywhere but at him. This would be difficult if she kept seeing Steve when she looked at him.

It would be best to focus on the differences. He was not a pilot and spy. "You said you are a captain. Of a starship. The ranking system has probably changed since I was on earth, but does this mean you command?"

Kirk chuckled. "Most of the time. I have a very opinionated crew, though, so they're not afraid to tell me when they disagree. But, yes." Blond strands of his hair fell over his eyes as he kept his gaze on the console. "I'm a captain. I'm a fairly young one."

"From exemplary conduct, I take it?"

"From circumstance and dumb luck, but… sure, we can call it exemplary conduct." When he glanced over at her, she rose her eyebrows in a silent request for more information. He obliged. "When I joined Starfleet, it was on a dare. My dad… he served. And he died saving the crew of his ship. So, a captain who knew him wanted me to prove that I could be as good as him. I thought I could be better. Well, long story short, I was on the _Enterprise_ under that captain when he was kidnapped by the same vessel that killed my dad. And somehow, we got out of it. I worked with the crew and we pulled together."

"I'm sure your father would have been proud." Diana could remember the way Steve talked - briefly - about his own father. _If you see something wrong in the world, you can do something or you can do nothing. And I already tried nothin'._

"I'd like to think so." His smile was sad, but thoughtful. "When I got command of the _Enterprise_ officially, I was one of the youngest captains in Starfleet. And I thought I could break the rules because they weren't really for _me_. I was the exception. And you know, I still think that for the most part, but… let's just say I got a dose of humility that set me on the right course."

"So, now you fly the galaxy for Earth."

"No. I'm the captain of the _Enterprise_ because… Somewhere, out there, right now, someone is saying the three most beautiful words ever spoken." Kirk paused for effect, and it worked. She was enthralled. "They're saying 'Please help me.' They're not afraid to ask for help. And I'm not afraid to give my life to fight for those who can't fight for themselves."

Diana slowly leaned back in her seat as her own words to her mother came back in full force to her. Full circle from a man who looked like the man who had been there when she said those very words to Hippolyta so that she could help fight man's war. It struck her as if the Fates had whispered in her ear themselves.

"I joined Starfleet because the galaxy is full of infinite wonder, but it's not why I'm a captain. I'm a captain because I want to meet people. I want to help them. Whether it's negotiating treaties or showing them how much good the Federation can bring to them…." Kirk leaned back in the chair, shrugging. "Then that's what I'm gonna do."

The silence held between them lasted for several moments. But, Diana did not have the words to express what he'd made her feel. For the first time in two centuries… she had clarity. She had passion. She felt… hunger for the unknown again.

The console beeped under Kirk's hand, and he turned to face it. "I've got comms. Remind me to pat Scotty on the back for teaching me that trick…"

By the time he would have looked up from his console again, Diana was gone. She knew what she had to do.

She had been wrong about what the world and her people needed. She needed to correct that mistake.

* * *

Jim had turned to tell the queen he was ready to send a message, but she was already gone. After a minute of inspection, both inside and outside of the shuttle, he tried to push down a small bit of worry and went back to work. It was not the first time a leader was pulled away for more important issues. He was just a little worried that she hadn't said anything to him first.

It took him another half hour to get the comms relay up and running, and another fifteen minutes to realize he'd hit a snag. Until he could actually open a channel with the _Enterprise_ , he'd just have to repeat the same distress call. So, he recorded a quick message and sent it on its way.

Once that was done, Jim stood and made his way over to the transporter pad. It had taken a lot of damage in the crash, but was still intact. He wasn't surprised, he'd been shoved into it and it hadn't given way.

"Ok, Sulu… Chekov… I hope you two made it back okay." He muttered to himself as he tried to pull back the information in the buffer. If their patterns were gone, either they successfully transported or…. _No_. No, he was not going to lose anyone this time.

Jim didn't get further than punching a couple of buttons before he heard voices outside the shuttle. And they didn't sound like any of the Amazons. Or the queen. In fact… The language sounded…

"Romulan…" He breathed, immediately going into defense mode. He crouched and made his way back over to the weapons locker to pull a new phaser. He set it to stun, then braced himself against cover before peeking outside.

Sure enough, there was a group of about ten Romulan centurions walking towards the shuttle. What the hell were they doing _here?_ This system was on the other side of the nebula. Sure, the nebula was relatively close to the Neutral Zone, but if they were here, they would have to have a ship well outside of the treaty boundaries. They were within Federation space.

 _And they want the shuttle._ Another quick glance suggested they weren't surprised to see it, either. They were already prepping their weapons.

The thought struck Jim like a bolt of lightning. Maybe they hadn't been taken out by the barrier. Even Chekov had told him that they'd barely begun scanning. They weren't close enough to get pulled into the ion turbulence. But, something had strafed their bow and… it could have been Romulan disruptor fire.

Of course, all of this was very important and Jim would store it away for later, but he couldn't help but remind himself that it was largely academic if he didn't survive the encounter. And even with cover, his odds of taking down 10 fully armed centurions with disruptor rifles were… very bad.

Maybe he could play ignorant, pretend that he was just as surprised by them as they could be of him. After a moment to steel his nerves, Jim slowly came out from cover long enough to call out to them, hands raised in surrender with his phaser in its holster.

"Did you crash here, too - "

One of them moved, gripping his rifle. Jim grabbed the phaser and managed to get a few shots off before they all opened fire.

He practically threw himself back behind cover in the ship. With the shuttle door ripped off its hinges, there wasn't much he could do except to use the bulkhead as door cover. He watched as green disruptor fire left scorch marks all over the floor and walls of the exposed doorway. He could hear their frantic calls and had to assume they were moving on his position quickly.

As far as calculated risks went, this one had to be up there with some of his worse ideas. But, he didn't really have another option. Adrenaline pumped through him, blood rushed through his ear as he whirled the corner long enough to let off a few phaser blasts, then had to take cover again before deluged with more green fire.

It was going to be a fast fight.

He stepped out and caught a hit in the shoulder. The shot sent him stumbling back against the bulkhead again. He crouched for cover and went for another blow, ignoring the way his wound burned. One of centurions had advanced ahead of the others. With a snarl, he gripped Jim's injured shoulder tight and yanked him out of the shuttle and onto the sand.

If he'd had more time to think about his circumstances, he might have realized that this was it, that he could very well die.

Instead, he only had time to mutter "Oh, shit - " as the disruptor came up.

And then something wrapped around his wrist and tugged him along the sand several feet away.

To his right, someone landed, gold and red plated armor planted in the white sands. Jim's eyes climbed up from the boots to a sword, a golden length of rope quickly retreating back to the hook at her hip. The blue armor around her hips. They went further to the shield held up and the red armor that wrapped the Queen Diana like it had been made for her.

And she was smiling. And Jim was spellbound.

"If you pick a fight, it should be an even one." She said with a chuckle, whirling the sword in her hand.

In a blink, she came at them.

The Romulans started to fire, but they were far and away unmatched for her. She never broke a sweat, she never flinched as the disruptor fire went past her. Her shield came up, blocking bolt after bolt before she hurled it at one of the centurions and took him down. Her sword went up, knocking the rifles out of each soldier's hand before she took them down. If it wasn't a swift kick, it was the lasso that seemed to have a mind of its own. Her hands went up and Jim gaped as the disruptor fire bounced off the silver bracelets. She was a force of nature. She was awe and wonder.

It was over almost before it begun. With a great "Hiya!", Diana grabbed the last centurion and knocked him into the last of his companions. The Romulans didn't get back up.

Satisfied that the fight was over, Diana turned to face him as she sheathed her sword smattered in the green blood of the Romulans that had gotten too close. After a moment, she extended her hand to him and he took it gladly. She helped him up and looked at him, amused and expectant.

And all Jim could think to say was… "Wow."

Diana smiled some. "Kal-El is not the only hero of Earth. And I wish to be its champion again."

It would have been easy to get carried away with all the questions that he wanted to ask her, but instead, a trickle of copper-based blood splattered from one of the Romulans she downed ran down her arm, and he couldn't help but reach out to clean it off with his thumb. "Well, you couldn't have gotten here a moment too soon."

Jim strode towards the pile of intruders, then looked up at the sky. "The Romulans don't share our love of exploration. If they want your planet, then they'll come for it."

He could feel Diana step up beside him, the tension between the two of them like a tight cord. When he glanced over at her, she was staring intently back at him. "Then we must reach your ship. And I will come with you."


	4. The Champion of Themyscira: Act III

**The Champion of Themyscira: Act III**

Hikaru Sulu was on good drugs. _Very_ good drugs.

He knew that, because the moment he opened his eyes and felt the weird sensation of a dermal graft on his right cheek, he knew that should hurt. He'd been burned before on away missions, and considering the last thing he remembered was getting a face full of plasma sparks, it wasn't a difficult conclusion. He'd been injured and now he was sitting in the _Enterprise's_ sickbay. And he drew that conclusion because Dr. McCoy was scowling down at him.

"Remind me to make a note in your record that you go through sedatives too quick. I gave you enough to knock out a damn horse and you're already up with the chickens."

Sulu tried to smile, then stopped when his skin pulled in a weirdly, mostly-numb kind of way. "Sorry, Doc. I guess I just had to know what I missed." His uniform shirt had been cut away so that the skin could be cleaned and grafts applied. Sulu absently realized he'd need a new shirt before he could head to the bridge. "How's the captain? And Chekov? How'd you know we were in trouble?"

Bones had a hand on the helmsman's shoulder before he could much past a sitting position, stern and all annoyance. Sulu knew him well enough to know that meant he was worried. "The captain's not back. Chekov's fine, but the two of you beamed aboard just before we lost contact with the shuttle. Ya'll were in the middle of the same firefight we were."

The pilot furrowed his brow, trying to piece together the last few memories we had. "Firefight? No, we had just gotten to the upper atmosphere and Chekov had begun scanning when we suddenly buckled and lost altitude."

McCoy arched an eyebrow. "Yeah, because a Romulan warbird decloaked and knocked you into that hyper-twister. They managed to knock our shields out for a minute before we realized what they were doin'." The doctor motioned to the three other crewmembers in biobeds on the other side of the bay. "Scotty got the shields up pretty quickly, but not before you two beamed directly to sickbay. The kid was rambling on about the captain still being on the ship, some sensor data he handed off to Scotty, and we ain't heard nothin' since."

"The warbird?"

"Got off a few more pot-shots and cloaked again." McCoy huffed. "Bastards have to still be in the area, though. We detected a transporter beam down to the surface a few hours ago, so we think they sent an away team. Scotty says the ionic-tachyon whatsit in the atmosphere has started to destabilize ever since the shuttle went in, so it's making it easier to see the surface. But, he reckons the Romulans just started beaming folks down there like throwin' spaghetti at a wall to see what sticks."

"And you said the captain's down there?" The good drugs weren't enough to stop Sulu's stomach from clenching. The idea that the captain was on a foreign planet alone with nothing but the wreckage of a shuttle was more than a little worrisome. Spock would need every crewmember he had if they were in the middle of a standoff as well.

Sulu threw his legs over the side of the biobed and began to get up.

"Hey, what the hell're you doing? You need to stay here for at least another two hours to let those grafts set!" Bones barked, the famous bedside manner in full swing. He tried to stop Sulu, but the younger man just shifted out of the way and stood anyway.

"I need to get to the bridge, the Commander will need me." He forced another somewhat numb and weirdly tugging smile. "I'm fine. I just need a uniform shirt and I'll go right back to duty."

"Hey, I've been runnin' all around Hell's half-acre to get you stitched up, and I'm not about to let you ruin it all! Get back in that bed, Sulu!" Bones was following him out of the sickbay, a hypo in hand.

Sulu backpedaled towards the turbolift, careful to keep enough distance between himself and the doctor so that he could time getting the lift doors closed. "Look, McCoy, you can confine me to quarters after we get the captain back, okay? I promise I'll be careful." Sulu managed to call for an available lift and stepped inside.

He could hear Bones still barking down the hall as the doors closed: "Hey, kid, just because the captain lets you sit in the chair doesn't mean you act like him with that stick shoved up your a-"

Yeah. Sulu was on the good drugs.

He still needed a shirt, though.

* * *

Ten minutes later, Sulu made it to the bridge with a new uniform shirt and a moment to look in the mirror to make sure he knew where the grafts were so he'd be careful not to bother them. He wasn't surprised at the somewhat perplexed and shocked looks from the bridge crew, but it was really Spock he needed to convince, so he headed right over to the commander where he stood, peering at the viewscreen and clearly considering his next move.

"Commander, reporting for duty."

Spock didn't shift his position or acknowledge him in any other manner other than to quirk an eyebrow and reply. "I find that highly unlikely, considering Dr. McCoy's report that you left Sickbay without being officially discharged."

He sighed, not entirely surprised. "I heard the captain's still on the surface. I flew the shuttle down there, I know the _Galileo_ 's specs better than anyone except for Scotty. I can handle the conn."

If Spock was concerned about his ability to perform his duties, he didn't voice it. Instead, he nodded and motioned to the conn. "Ensign, you are relieved."

The ensign who had managed his station vacated it with a curt nod in his direction, and he took a seat.

"Mister Sulu!" Chekov beamed at him. He was pretty sure he would have hugged him if they hadn't been on the bridge together. He'd have to remember to ask Chekov exactly what had happened while he'd been out.

He took a quiet moment to familiarize himself with the ship's logs so he could determine the patterns of fire, trajectory, and flight patterns. That was when he noticed the chronometer.

"Commander, it's been two days since the crash?" He asked, turning to face Spock again.

The Vulcan shifted to face him, his hands behind his back. "Yes. I assumed that Dr. McCoy would have shared that with you."

Sulu felt his cheeks warm a bit, and he chuckled. "To be fair, I didn't give him much of a chance."

"We've been in a standoff with them for the past 37 hours. It is unlikely that they have left orbit of the planet, due to the atmospheric barrier's high density of tachyon particles."

"Tachyon." He repeated, considering the implications. "When we hit the atmosphere, the tachyons flooded the warp core so quickly I couldn't get the impulse engine back online. Maybe they're worried the same will happen to them if they get too close."

"Ze warbird most likely has remained in ze same position since it cloaked again. Unfortunately, ve don't know vhere zat is. Ze sensors were offline at ze time." Chekov held up his padd to show Sulu what he'd been working on. "I sink ze tachyons may actually interfere vis their cloaking in some way because zey actually _use_ ze particle."

"An intriguing theory, Mister Chekov." Spock brought a hand to his chin, mulling the suggestion over. "But, ultimately, it brings us no closer to understanding why they are so far from the Neutral Zone. This is well within Federation boundaries."

"Not to them." Sulu offered. "I mean, they've said for years that if the Federation doesn't have it stamped and serialized, it's not technically ours. Maybe they're looking to get their own piece of the pie past the nebula."

"Perhaps. And if that is the case, we cannot allow them to do so." Spock slowly circled the room, then paused as both he and Sulu noticed the way Lieutenant Uhura had gone still, then frantically began flipping switches. Spock broke the silence first, echoing what they were all thinking. "Lieutenant? Do you have something?"

"I think so…" She breathed, straining to hear. It took her a moment, but she brought up her console to perform additional enhancements. "It's a signal coming from the subspace relays on the planet, but… it has a Federation transponder. I think it's the _Galileo._ "

"Can you put it through?"

"Affirmative, but it's lost a lot of fidelity in all the bouncing from relay to relay. I'm cleaning it up as best I can."

The bridge fell silent save for the occasional beep from a console and a low static as Uhura tried to clear up the sound. Finally, the voice came through. It was degraded, but it was instantly recognizable.

" _-irk to Enterprise - repeat, Kirk to - terprise. If you can hear me - landed on surface - shuttle - cannot fly - need open channel to - the ship and -stablish transporter lock - If you get this, lock onto - signal and - see if you can enhance - will repeat hail until - core fails. Kirk out."_

"He's alive!" Chekov jumped. " _Yo mayo_!"

Sulu was pretty sure he could see a smile tugging at the very edges of Spock's lips as he observed the ensign. "So it would seem." He glanced back at Uhura. "Can we do what the captain is requesting?"

"Well…" Uhura performed a quick set of calculations on her console as she considered it. "He's using the subspace network on the planet to bounce the _Galileo's_ signal. Without a deflector dish at his disposal, that's the best he could do. So, if we can boost our signal and lock onto the originating point on the relay, then…. Yes. We can hail him and keep a channel open once he responds."

Nodding, Spock made his way to the chair and flipped the internal comm. "Bridge to Commander Scott."

"Scotty here. Did ye find anythin', Mister Spock? If ye found what bastards broke my ship, I'd very much request we blow the hell out of them. I'm gonna be scrubbing scorch offa the hull for weeks now." The chief engineer's brogue seemed to be even thicker than usual, most likely from fatigue and frustration at the damage his crew was trying to repair.

"We found the captain. His shuttle has wrecked on the surface of the planet. Can we lock onto the transporter station in the shuttle and beam him out if we can keep a channel open?" Spock seemed to have more faith in the new transporters on those shuttles than Sulu did. He was thankful it had clearly saved his skin, but he wasn't sure how he felt about them operating through that atmosphere.

"Aahhh… aye, I think so. I'll need a bit o'time to reroute power from non-essential systems, but that should be enough to lock on. I'm more worried 'bout the damn atmosphere than anythin' else."

"How so?" Spock quirked an eyebrow and took a seat in the chair, pressing his fingers together thoughtfully.

"Well, this atmosphere is a bit like the kinda science fair project me wee Granny used to do in primary school. Those ion storms and tachyon clouds worked in tandem to create a sort of spacial shield for the planet. We set it off by introducing an impulse field and I dinnae think the planet was meant to handle that. It's like adding vinegar to bakin' soda and watching the volcano just explode. Unless we can rebalance it, the atmospheric barrier will completely burn up and ruin the meteorological systems. We could destroy the planet. Not today, not tomorrow, but certainly in a few decades."

"Wait…." Sulu interrupted him before he could continue. "Scotty, are you saying the barrier is _supposed_ to be there?"

"Aye."

"It is impossible for a tachyon particle to naturally occur in sub-orbit conditions, Mister Scott." Spock reminded him.

"I know that, but I'm sayin' that without it, that planet wouldn't be class-M! I cannae tell ye how it got there, just that is. And we broke it!"

"Then, we shall endeavor to restore the balance to the atmosphere once we're able to handle the present situation, Mister Scott. Please let us know once you have been able to reroute power appropriately. We will attempt to hail the captain in the meantime." Once the communication cut, Sulu found himself wishing for just a moment that he was telepathic. He wished he knew what was going on in the commander's head. Thankfully, he didn't have to wait long for his decision. "Ensign Chekov. If we attempt to beam the captain back on board, there is a high probability that the Romulans will sense that our shields are down for the transport and attack us. We will need to devise a way to either distract them from this fact."

"Eh, yes, sir." Chekov grabbed his stylus and swiveled his chair. Sulu could tell his friend was concocting some genius plan and assuming it wasn't nearly as good as it was. "Ze shields will only be down for two or three seconds as we complete ze transport. Perhaps ve could shift our position and release a plasma vent to obscure zeir sensors."

"That'll work?" Sulu rose an eyebrow, then felt the graft on his face twinge again. That time, it actually stung. He struggled to keep his face as neutral as he could from that point.

"Eh, maybe. It depends on how good ze sensors on ze warbird are vhen cloaked."

Spock nodded. "A sound suggestion. Make the necessary preparations and coordinate with Mister Sulu. Lieutenant Uhura, let me know the moment you are able to make contact with the Captain."

"Aye, sir." The trio said from their respective stations. As the graft itched again and Sulu found himself pre-programming a tight about-face so they could vent plasma when ready, part of him wondered if maybe he should have stayed in Sickbay after all. He only hoped the captain was faring better.

* * *

It had taken about an hour to sort out the dead Romulans from the simply unconscious ones. The ratio was further in the deceased column than Diana preferred, but the rifles they had carried stirred her ever-present war with those sorts of weapons. Besides, when deflecting those disruptor pulses, she had found that they did more damage than bullets could. There was no honor in these Romulans. She found that their names matched their fury: Romulus slew his brother Remus and built Rome with his blood as its mortar. From what Captain Kirk had told her of these centurions, they had been much the same to their own people. And now they had begun with this Federation, this blossoming cluster of exploration that Earth struck out upon.

Diana could not let that stand.

Kal was there only moments after Diana and Kirk had begun to move the bodies. She knew it pained him to admit that he was slowing down, but she knew that being _minutes_ late to a firefight was not indicative of his gifts. The red in the star took from him every day. Soon, he would be another old man on the island, content to see the waves lap upon the sand until he could be greeted by his wife. Until that day, Clark Kent would forever remain dead upon Earth, and Kal-El, the last son of his house, would remain on Themyscira. Forever a man away from his people.

She found herself thinking of Etta for a long moment. Sweet Etta. Her sister in man's strange, new world. She who had taught Diana how to move forward. If only she could have taught that to Kal.

Not all hearts were the same. Not all men were the same. Especially not supermen.

"Who are they?" Kal asked, not for the first time since he'd arrived. Until the bodies had been appropriately set aside, neither of the two in the fight would give him an answer. Now that there were two centurions - unconscious but alive - bound in straps from their own uniforms, Diana and Kal followed the captain of the _Enterprise_ back into his shuttle as he promised them an explanation.

"I've already told the queen a fair bit," Kirk said as he made his way to a console. "But, the Romulans are an offshoot species of one of the Federation's key cultures - the Vulcans. Whereas the Vulcans purge emotion and value logic, the Romulans have excelled in cutthroat politics and subterfuge. We've been in sort of a cold war with them, I guess, for several decades." Kirk took a seat, bringing up an image of a vessel in space.

"It is a vulture of metal." Diana mused, struck by the predatory arc of the ship's wings.

"It _is._ We call them warbirds. The Romulans bought them off of another race, the Klingon Empire, and made a few modifications." Kirk didn't bother to hide his smirk. Clearly, he had impressed her in some fashion. Again, the expression was a bit _too_ similar, and she forced her attention back to the image, pursing her lips. "Mainly, they can cloak."

"Cloak?" Kal echoed. "How so?"

Kirk sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. "We're not sure. It's the biggest secret in military counter-intelligence right now. But, that would explain why we didn't see them before they shot my shuttle out of the sky."

"You think they did this?" Diana turned her attention from the image on the console to the larger state of the shuttle. "You said the atmospheric barrier brought the ship down."

"Oh, it definitely did. But, something came across our bow and knocked out our impulse drive in seconds. My guess is that the warbird came out of cloak long enough to hit us, then turned its attention to my ship." There was a dark edge to his tone that gave her pause. James Kirk had history with the Romulan Empire, and not in the abstract sense. It was a very concrete blow.

"Are you sure your crew is still up there?" Kal's mood had improved, although she hadn't had an opportunity to ask why. She assumed that the walk had helped him clear his mind. They would most certainly speak on the matter, but right now, they were all focused on the immediate threat to Themyscira, and to the captain's predicament.

 _But, this could all still be a trick of Fate, Diana._ She almost hear her mother. _There is much you do not understand. Men are easily corrupted._ With the evidence that there were others who had landed on the planet, she could understand why her aunt had always feared invasion. There was a deep-rooted fear when danger came to the shores of one's own people. And every time she had faced it in the past… she had had others. She was an ally. She was not the queen.

She _could_ not be the queen. Not now. Not with this threat looming overhead.

"I have to hope they are." Kirk replied, still watching the image of the warbird. "If they can open a channel with me, then I'm hoping they can find a way to beam me back."

"'Beam you back?'" Diana echoed, the parlance unfamiliar to her.

Kirk's eyebrows shot up as he realized what he'd said. She could tell he was now struggling to find the right way to explain the technology. "We have a device on our ship that interfaces with that pad over there - " He motioned to a dingy white-walled station. "That basically dematerializes a person into a small enough beam of particles and reassembles them instantly on the ship."

"You could just call it a teleporter, son." Kal sighed.

"Well, do you… have those? On Themyscira?" Kirk was trying to mask his curiosity and failed.

"No." He replied. "But, we know of the technology. Darkseid utilized similar technology with boom tubes when he tried to invade the planet."

"When you were Superman." Kirk pushed, another mischievous look in his eye. Diana found herself wondering if Kal would push back again.

Instead, he gave a resigned chuckle and noded. "When I was Superman, yes. And when Diana went by the moniker Wonder Woman." He motioned to Diana's armor. "Which, I did notice you're back to wearing that."

"Nice outfit," Kirk remarked, genuinely pleased. She had to wonder why he was so excited by all of this. What had the history books said of them? Did she really want to know? "So, that's a specific armor you wore for battle? When you were…"

"We were heroes." Kal acknowledged. "And… I'm sure she'd love to tell you all about it, but we don't have the time. The important thing is, you think you can get back up to the ship."

"Yes, and I think that's how the Romulans came down here - you didn't see any other vessels wrecked, just mine. I have a feeling my coming here may have opened your planet up to further incursions." His unspoken apology was clear, but Diana would have none of it. She had come too far for him to turn them away now.

"If you truly think that your crew can help repair the barrier, then it must be done." Diana said, making her way over to the captain. "And I will help you."

"Somehow I knew you were going to say that," Kal muttered behind her, sighing. "Diana, a moment?" The way he beckoned her, she knew he would have to say his piece. Kal knew her well enough not to try to dissuade her, but she had a feeling he would at least try to present his side of the argument. She knew she had already thought through them all.

Diana nodded to Kal, then politely smiled back at Kirk. "Excuse us a moment, Captain."

"Of course." Kirk replied, then as they made their way out, she heard him add, "By the way, I'd be happy to have you come aboard…"

Kal waited until they were reasonably out of earshot, although something told Diana that the conversation could have just as easily been for the captain's ears as well. "You want to leave."

"Yes." She said, firm as ever. "I cannot help my people from here, Kal. _Our_ people. I was once a champion of Earth, and I can be their champion again."

"To what end?" Kal sounded so tired and she couldn't help but feel as though she'd somehow caused that. In two centuries, they rarely argued. And the arguments about returning to Earth had long disappeared alongside the arguments on how to integrate men into the Amazon society. "You don't owe them a damn thing, Diana. They have heroes. We did our duty, we did what we promised our families. I promised my parents I would do what I could to make humanity better. And we left an entire League ten times the size of what we started with in our stead. What makes you think they need us - need _you_ \- more than the people here?"

"Because I never wanted to be the queen of Themyscira, only its steward." Diana pleaded. "Kal, you came to my land because you left Clark Kent behind. And I have always respected that choice. But, it was never my dream to rule Themyscira instead of my mother. I just wanted it to be a haven. And it is. But, the Senate does not need a monarch. Let them shape the destiny of this planet now. Without me."

Kal closed his eyes, letting his head droop slightly. Nothing she had said would have been a surprise. "How long do you think this is going to take?"

"I only wish to see the world that they have made for themselves. I could do that from their ship." Diana motioned aimlessly to the sky above, as if they could see the vessel as one of many celestial bodies. "I could come back as soon as I have read their histories."

Kal chuckled, sad and yet at once relieved. When he finally looked at her again, she felt her heart clench with fresh loss. "We both know that's not you. Especially not now. Not when the person who lands here looks like him. And you will have to confront that at some point whether you like it or not. If a woman who looked like Lois just dropped out of the sky tomorrow, Diana, I'd follow her to the ends of the universe."

"That is you, Kal. Not me. I do not do this for him, or because of the similarity. I do it because I stepped away from my duty. The Amazons are meant to be a bridge to greater understanding between all of mankind. How am I a bridge to anything if I remain here, shielded and sheltered from the truth, no matter how dark or unpleasant it may be?"

Kal didn't have a good response that time. The two of them had both reached a mutual understanding, even if unpleasant. He knew why she would go, and she understood why he would stay - and why he wanted her to stay as well.

She hated goodbyes of any kind. It was the only true aspect of her life she could never master.

"I've got a signal!" Kirk called from the _Galileo_.

Diana glanced back at it, then turned to Kal. "Will you stay near the shuttle? Once we know how to restore the barrier, we should speak. They may need your help."

Kal nodded, but made no move to join her in the cockpit.

* * *

" _It's good to hear your voice, Captain,"_ A woman's voice carried to Diana's ears the moment she stepped into the shuttle, tinny but still pleasant.

"Believe me, Uhura, I've missed you, too." The captain was smiling, unabashedly pleased that his marooned time would hopefully come to an end. Even though he still seemed cool and unfazed, he still seemed open in a way that many people were not. "Please tell me you guys are okay and you have a way to get me back up."

" _We do. The Commander can fill you in on the details, but we should be able to use the comm signal to lock onto the Galileo's transporter pad."_

"Good." He turned to face Diana and flipped a button. Presumably, he muted the communication. "Are you coming? Did I accidentally start a fight for the throne or something?"

Diana chuckled. "No fights. We are in agreement. I will help restore the barrier and evaluate what has transpired since we left the world of men."

Kirk quirked an eyebrow at her. "The world of… well, I'm more than happy to have you for however long you're willing, your majesty." Before she could reply, he turned his attention back to the console and flipped a switch. "Spock, you there?"

" _Affirmative, Jim. I am pleased that you are well and were able to reach us. We have determined a course of action to beam you aboard while accounting for the Romulan warbird that is cloaked nearby."_

"They're still here?" Kirk winced. "That explains the dozen centurions that were on the surface of the planet. They were coming for the shuttle."

" _Are you uninjured?_ "

"Nothing Bones can't take care of, Southern charm and all. Did Sulu and Chekov make it aboard okay?" The moment of silence on the other end had started to pull the smile from his lips before a youthful, Russian voice and another, more steady one, replied.

" _Da, keyptin!"_

" _I appreciate the rescue, sir. We're fine."_

Kirk shook his head. "Sulu, you didn't look fine. If I find you at the helm when I get back there, I'll walk you back to Sickbay myself. I don't need to get _another_ lecture from your daughter. Demora's adorable, but last time I nearly got a spoonful of cereal chucked at my shirt."

" _With all due respect, sir, you can do that when you're back. Right now, you need your best pilot to run circles around these guys."_

" _Captain,"_ The first voice, that of Commander Spock, returned. _"Mister Scott and Mister Chekov are ready to beam you aboard when ready, captain._ "

"Great." Kirk's gaze drifted over to Diana. She didn't hide her anticipation at all. "Look, I need you to beam myself and one other aboard." As if he knew his first officer would object, he continued on. It was only then that he finally looked away from her, and she let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. He watched her so intently, as if he always had her full attention. It was so much like… "One of the leaders on this planet has offered to come aboard, and seeing as how I think we broke her atmosphere, I couldn't tell her no even if I wanted to. Beam her up first."

" _Understood. I trust you will provide more information once we're out of immediate danger."_

"I'll give you the full report, Spock, just let me know when we can beam her aboard." Kirk rolled his eyes so hard, she was worried he'd sprain something. It reminded her of working with J'onn. The Martian loved to press an issue until he fully understood it, much to Bruce's chagrin.

" _It will take a few moments to configure the transporters. I will signal when ready. Stand by."_

With that, Kirk stood and made his way past Diana to the transporter pad. "Ok, this is probably going to feel weird, you might have some nausea and disorientation, but - "

Diana chuckled, stepping into his line of sight so he wouldn't keep rambling. "I, too, have a strong constitution, Captain Kirk. I am sure I will be fine."

" _We are ready when you are, captain. Initiate transport."_

Kirk fought another chuckle, then motioned for her to step into the pad. "This way, your highness."

Diana fully intended on telling him to stop calling her that, but no sooner than she stood and faced him in the transporter, he disappeared from her view.

And she was aboard a glimmering white vessel.

Such were the things of Elysium.

The transporter room, as Jim had called it, gleamed with panels of white light that seemed at once both like the hospitals of old Earth and like temples she had travelled to in her many years searching for the gods. A few other officers, bearing red shirts in the same style as Kirk's, were watching her intently.

Next to her, something shimmered. She quickly stepped off the pad as the captain materialized on another one of the circles. She turned back to the crew and the one at the actual console with some sort of orange monocle, stood.

"Aye, lassie, when the cap'n said he wanted to bring ye on board, I wasn't quite expectin'... well... "

"Not now, Scotty." Kirk stepped off the pad and motioned for Diana to follow him. "Eyes to yourself, I need you on the bridge." He gently took hold of her elbow and steered her through the door. It was probably obvious that she was taking it all in, and she rather hated that he wanted to steer her away. It was a marvel.

"This is your ship." She remarked, catching sight of the display showing a ship's map. She quickly scanned the text and caught the dimensions of the ship. "There are multiple decks? This is larger than any Kryptonian vessel I have ever seen, even the mothership."

Kirk chuckled, but he quickly grabbed her arm and gingerly kept her moving. "Yes, this is the _Enterprise._ I promise to give you the full tour, if you like, but it's a bit beat up right now on account of the Romulans trying to kill us, so can we handle that first?"

"Yes, of course…" She agreed, walking with him down the corridor, even though she strained to look around every corner. "In two hundred years, your technology advanced so that you could make _this_?"

"Yup. In fact, they build these in a shipyard outside my home town." He replied, then paused as they reached a doorway. It slid open and the three of them - Scotty had been straining to keep up - stepped in. Once the elevator began to move, he turned his attention to Mister Scott. "Scotty, the Romulans were on the surface of Themyscira. We need to find a way to stop them from getting back there, or they'll do what they've done to the last four colonies the Federation tried to establish near Neutral Zone space."

Scotty nodded, then paused. "What'd ye call it?"

"Themyscira," Diana answered. "My land. It is called Themyscira. Home of the Amazons."

Kirk waved his hand in dismissal. "That's not important right now. What did we do to the atmosphere when that warbird hit the shuttle?"

"The atmosphere had a very careful balance of ionic turbulence and tachyon particles. When ye lost impulse and hit the atmosphere, tachyons had flooded the engine. That reaction seems to have started some sort o' chain reaction. It's setting off ion storms that are beginnin' to burn off the atmosphere. It'll take time for it to effect the people below, but it's most certainly makin' it possible for them bastards to beam down."

"Storms?" Diana rose an eyebrow. "We've seen no storms."

"Och, ye wouldn't, lass. Ion storms that high up dinnae really turn into a meteorological event. I'm more worried about what happens if'n those storms disappear and the planet's exposed to the sun. It'll bake off all the clouds eventually."

Kirk furrowed his brow. "Wait, how did tachyon particles get into the upper atmosphere of a class-M planet?"

"It wasn't natural, that's for sure. Somethin' created that atmosphere and once it's gone, the planet will be uninhabitable."

Diana's eyes widened as the two men kept talking. "Captain - "

"Well, then how do we fix it, Mister Scott? I'm not leaving here knowing we killed a planet!"

"I've been a bit preoccupied with reroutin' power so we could beam ye back, cap'n - "

"And what do you mean, 'bake off the clouds?' I thought the star was getting cooler -"

"Aye, but the ozone for a class-M planet with a yellow star has a different level of ozone to absorb radiation. Without the barrier, there's nothing to prevent the increased radiation output from the red giant as its mass expands from cooking the planet alive - "

" _James._ " Diana finally said, catching both of their attention from the formal way she addressed him by his first name. The shocked expression she received from him was reward enough, but she couldn't enjoy it. "My people created the barrier when we came to Themyscira. But, I was never privy to how it was created or the full scope of that process. You are telling me that without the barrier, Themyscira never would have been able to sustain life. My people will _all die_."

Kirk sighed. "I know how it sounds, and I promise you, I am not leaving here until we fix it. But, if we try to do anything with that warbird out there, still cloaked, they will not hesitate to fire on us until we're annihilated." The doors to the elevator opened in another rush of air, and he stepped off the platform first. "Trust me, your majesty, I will fix this."

Diana tried to swallow the cold worry in her stomach as she followed him onto the bridge. Suddenly, the reality of what she had thought would be in space above her planet sank in. It was so much more than a simple crash and a marooned captain.

What exactly had mankind created with their gift of knowledge? What were they going to do with it _next_?


	5. The Champion of Themyscira: Act IV

**The Champion of Themyscira: Act IV**

"Captain on the bridge," Diana recognized the voice instantly as that of his Commander Spock, given the communication from before. The man stood, clad in a blue uniform with the most curious ears. Vulcan. _Not_ Romulan, she reminded herself based on what the captain had told her before.

Kirk waved Commander Spock off from his formal announcement as he strode towards his chair. "Status report. I want to know what's going on with that warbird."

Scotty zipped off past Diana, on his way to another station, and it occurred to her that she was most definitely in the center of the action and yet she had no idea what she should do to help. She had offered to do so, but her focus had been on the barrier over her planet. If she was to be of use to the _Enterprise_ , she would need to learn of this new technology and quickly.

"They attempted to hit our port bow when we dropped shields to beam you aboard, but we vented plasma exhaust and that seemed to confuse their sensors enough that their shots went wild. They cloaked again. We haven't seen them since."

"Thank you, Mister Sulu." Kirk took a seat in the chair in the center of the bridge, then pointed to the gold-shirted gentleman. "What did I say? Get back to sickbay, or I'll send Bones up here to deal with you myself - "

Diana was very nearly thrown off her feet. The ground rumbled and the world pitched as something struck them. She didn't take the change in balance as well as she normally would, possibly because she felt as though everything was slightly lighter on the ship. As she felt her foot go out from under her, she gripped the railing in front of her hard. The slight groan of metal as her fingers began to dent the railing went unnoticed, only because the ship was rattled by another hit.

She watched Kirk buckle in his chair, gripping the armrests tightly. In a moment, his expression shifted to something she'd not yet seen. The way his eyes widened and his jaw set was indicative of a man that had just been pushed past his courtesy. He was angry, and he was not pleased with the circumstances.

" _ **Red alert!**_ Find out where that came from and put it on screen!" He snapped. Diana's gaze rose to match where the rest of the crew was watching… the planet. Her planet. Themyscira, a blue and ruddy orb in the blackness of space.

"It's no good, Ceyptin. Ve don't have any way to track zem. Zey move before ve can get zem onscreen!" The youngest of the crewmen was Chekov. No wonder Kirk had been concerned for them both. These were two of his critical crewmembers. If they had not survived, it would have been a hefty burden for Kirk to bear.

"Find me a breadcrumb, Mister Chekov. I am not about to let a Romulan warbird ding-dong-ditch me while we've left Themyscira vulnerable." The captain's tone seemed to be even, but Diana knew as well as anyone with a temper that ran deep - tone was only the performance one presented to others.

"We have approached this at every logical angle, Captain. The Romulans have clearly addressed the issue that allowed us to spot them using tracking sensors."

Kirk turned to face him, clearly exasperated. "Then think _illogically_ , Spock. We can't just sit here and wait for them to wear us down. Not when they probably know their landing party was nearly wiped out on the surface."

"Nearly?"

"We took most of them out in the melee, but a couple were still alive. The Amazons have them in custody."

Diana kept her attention trained on the planet throughout the argument. Her gaze was trained on those storms that Scotty had mentioned. Blossoms of green sparking clouds that were so high in orbit, the Themyscirans couldn't see them. The way they arced and congregated, they did not act like normal weather systems. Nothing like she had seen on Earth. They had a set pattern, except for a small section in the northern continent… That section was suspiciously…. Bare…

The woman at the furthest right station turned to face the captain. "Did you just say Amazons?"

Kirk sighed and held his hand up to stop her. "Yes, and we will hash all this out when we figure out how to see the Romulans."

Diana's eyes widened as she realized what was before them all. "You _can_ see them." She simply stated.

Kirk paused, looking back at her. The rest of the crew's eyes followed.

She hardly paid the attention any mind. She instead pointed to the section of the viewscreen. "You have been so focused on using your sensors, but they are close to the planet. You can see the way the image distorts near the northern continent."

It didn't take long before Scotty piped up from his station. "She's right, captain. The tachyon particles are causing issues with the cloak. It's not enough to pick up on sensors, but I can see where the electromagnetic fluctuations are degrading the visual cloak."

Kirk stood, hawk-like. "Can you get a position?"

"Aye."

"Then target their weapons and _fire_."

A halo of red bursts lit up the image before them. Whatever it was the _Enterprise_ fired on the ship soared through space before striking its prey. Before their eyes, the cloak that had been so feared failed. The same ship design that he had shown her in the shuttle was now present before them all, blooming with fresh wounds as the vacuum of space would swallow an explosion as soon as it could.

"Direct hit, they have lost photon torpedoes. They are returning fire." Spock called, having moved to his own station. It was an elegant dance like any other warrior formation. Diana could see Antiope beside her, critiquing the strategy so that she could provide suggestions later. While she was not her aunt, she found herself doing much the same. Of course, she had a feeling it was less easy to change this Federation crew's routines than it was an Amazon phalanx. Green fire lashed back out at the _Enterprise_ , a much larger cousin to the disruptor rifles she had dispatched so easily earlier. The ship shook, but the crew did not seem nearly as fazed this time.

"Hit 'em again, then target their propulsion. They're not going anywhere except to a Federation marshall."

"Jim, we've got a bigger problem than the ship!" Scotty said, his face stricken. "The warbird got too close to the atmosphere, it's accelerated the ion storms. We cannae go after the warbird and fix the barrier at the same time. If we don't do somethin' now, it'll be too late!"

Kirk's breath heaved in his chest. His gaze shifted from Scotty, then to Diana. In those moments, she felt her own breath leave her. In his expression, his anger against the Romulans melted in place of his own promise to her. Diana did not know how or why, but she knew that he was watching _her_.

The moment passed. He closed his eyes and hissed, " _Dammit_ ," before shaking his head. "Let them go. Scotty, please tell me you have a plan."

The Scotsman hemmed and hawed as his fingers flew over the console. "I… yes, but it's got a catch!"

"Does the catch involve losing the planet or the _Enterprise?_ " It was Diana who spoke now, a force of calm over the otherwise hectic bridge. When Kirk looked askance at her, she elaborated. "These are my people, but I will not ask you to sacrifice the ship in a rash attempt to save them."

He opened his mouth to possibly protest, then changed his mind for whatever reason. Instead, he sighed and nodded to Scotty. "Well, Mister Scott, give her an answer. I might override her, but let's hear it."

The expression Scotty gave her suggested there was a good chance she would not like it. "I think we can use tachyon particles expelled from the warp field and channel it with the same ratio of ions back down to the planet's atmosphere. It should restabilize the reaction quickly and the planet will be safe from detection."

Kirk's brow furrowed. "So, what's the catch?"

"The catch is…. If I do it, we lose communication with the surface. And ye can't even consider interfering with the barrier again until we can really spend time studyin' it. It'll be even more volatile now. As it is, once we use the beam, I cannae recommend using the transporters. Anyone who tries it will get fried."

Diana sighed, closing her eyes. So, that was it.

The crossroads had returned. Like Sisyphus and his boulder, every time Diana thought she had climbed out of the pit of entrapment, it slipped from her hands again. She held her face to the sky above her, as if she was still on the planet. She could feel no warm sunlight to help soothe her balms.

 _Gods, if you are still alive, I will find you and make you answer for this punishment_. She thought, an earnest prayer to the powers beyond her understanding.

Finally, she opened her eyes and looked over at Scotty again. "How long will we have to speak to those on the surface?"

"You'll have about a minute once we get started. Maybe two."

Diana nodded, heavy. She turned her attention to Kirk. "Then, please. Save Themyscira, Captain. I would like to speak with Kal, if I can." When Kirk rose an eyebrow, she said, "So I can explain that I am staying."

The captain stood, serious and respectful. He managed to tear his gaze away from Diana long enough to look to his chief engineer and muttered "Get started, Mister Scott." Then motioned for Diana to follow him over to Uhura's station. "Uhura, see if you can raise the shuttle and give Diana time to speak to him."

"Yes, sir." Uhura's hands were flying over the console, but it had no meaning for the woman who stood over her, waiting.

She would be be leaving again. _If you leave, you may never return._ Her mother's warnings, her mother's shadow, they followed her everywhere.

The captain seemed to have noticed her concern and cleared his throat to get her attention. "You know, we could try to beam you back - "

Diana shook her head, holding a hand up to silence him. "No. I have made my choice. My responsibilities are not just to the Amazons, but to mankind at large." She had found her way back to Themyscira once, she would do it again. Perhaps even with the _Enterprise's_ help. Perhaps another ship. But, Themyscira did not need her. Not in the way Kal thought they did.

Uhura held out one of the earpieces like the one in her ear. "I have your friend on the line. We're going to lose fidelity very quickly."

Diana nodded and took the tool. Without thinking, she simply breathed, "Thank you, sister." She slipped the gadget onto her ear and took a deep breath. "Kal? Are you there?"

" _Diana? What's happened? The Romulans came to and their communication devices sounded frantic. They tried to escape."_

"Did you subdue them?"

" _One of them. The other one pulled some sort of ceremonial knife and landed on it."_ Kal's remorse was palpable. _"I'm sorry, Diana."_

"We've started the particle beam. We should know right quick if it'll work." Scotty said from his station behind her.

"Don't be, Kal. You are not responsible for their actions." She caught Uhura motioning out of the corner of her eye. She pointed to a console reading that had begun to flash urgently. She had to assume that the signal was starting to go. "Kal…. They have found a way to seal the barrier." She didn't have to say it.

Kal knew. _"You're not coming back._ "

"I cannot. The transporters will not work while they are restoring the barrier. The technology we used terraformed the planet, Kal. Without the _Enterprise_ to help us, all of Themyscira would have died. I cannot jeopardize that. The Senate must decide their fate now. Please tell Menalippe that I did as she asked. I will not govern in the way I had. I embrace the unknown."

" _I understand._ " There was so much to be said between them, and yet, she felt it already had. _"Be careful, Diana. And…"_

The signal was beginning to drop. "What? Kal, are you still there?"

" _Find my boy, Diana - he's alive - if - find him - and tell him - sorry - love - "_

"The particle beam's in full swing." The chief engineer's voice cut through the static like a knife.

Again, she distinctly lacked in knowing how to say goodbye. Diana swallowed down the well of emotion that threatened to overtake her and handed the earpiece back to Uhura. Her eyes had grown warm from tears, ready to fall, to mourn the loss of everything she knew. Again.

But, she had to think of why she had made those choices. The people around her, on this ship, in this brave, new world she knew nothing about.

It was her duty to protect those who could not protect themselves. Her people were protected. They did not need her.

She stepped away from the console and brushed the moisture out of her eyes. She would return. When it was time. And when she knew the fate of his child.

A hand on her shoulder made her whirl on instinct, but when she was confronted by the face of a man who was in every Steve Trevor while most definitely _not_ Steve Trevor, it was almost too much. "I'm sorry that it happened this way. I swear to you, we will do everything in our power to get you back to your people, Your Majest-"

"Diana…." She breathed, the word as much an anchor as it was a star to steer by. Her gaze met his and held it. "I am no longer Queen of Themyscira. I am Diana. _Just_ Diana."

He nodded, offering her a slight smile. "Understood. Diana. Once we're through with the particle beam, I need to report to Starfleet. But, we will find you accommodations." He glanced past her, beckoning someone closer. "Yeoman Rand, I'm assigning Diana to our ambassadorial quarters for now, but please make sure she has food and clothing rations assigned so she can feel a bit more at home."

"Of course, Captain."

When Diana turned, she couldn't help but smile at how familiar - in a way - the red-clad yeoman looked. She could think of at least two amazons that shared the long, luscious blonde hair and tall, strong figure. When she smiled at Diana, she could feel her heartache ease for a moment. "Come with me, please. We'll make sure you're well-cared for, Miss…"

The two of them made it to the lift again, and Diana cast one glance back at the captain before the doors shut. He had been watching her go before finally turning his attention back to his chief engineer.

"Miss Prince. My name is Diana Prince."

* * *

 _Stardate 2264.20._

Strange convention, this stardate. But, in many ways, Diana found it soothing. As she felt about many things on the ship, there was a strange familiarity in the _un_ familiarity of it all. The strange sort of dissonance that she had come to expect in her time on Earth. For as many things as she felt she knew with certainty during those days: That the gods could be cruel, that the earth still spun, that people were complex and corruptible and full of love - there were many things she did not know.

It was most certainly in embracing the unknown that she had made her mark upon the world, and ultimately how she learned to love it.

The question was: what would she find to love now? What new treasures did the Federation, this unique place that humanity found itself in, have for her? And conversely, what dangers did they face? What enemies lurked in the darkness between stars, and in their own beds? Man was many things, and one of those was easy to anger.

It had been a few "stardates" since they had left orbit around the planet. Themyscira was in the stardust behind them. In that time, Diana had put her armor in a case that Sulu had recommended, considering he, too, had an interest in weaponry. She had to confess, it seemed to be more that he had an interest in _her_ armor and weaponry rather than sharing his own collection. She had spent a day to familiarize herself with fashion of the time and had worked with Yeoman Rand to choose civilian garb that was to her taste. For example, the blue slacks and the red top with its uniquely "modern" straps that crossed her shoulders and then again on her back. Her hair was down, spilled over her shoulders. The bracelets, however, she kept. As was tradition.

It all felt very familiar and yet wholly unique.

Diana had otherwise kept to herself. She knew she would have time to get to know the rest of the crew in greater fashion, but until she knew where she was going, she found herself lost in the stars. There was so much out there. She wondered of so many things.

She wondered how it was that she had been able to find the song playing in the small lounge as she nursed her glass of ale. She wanted the drink so rarely. It was not often to her taste.

 _I'll look into your eyes and hold your hand…_

 _I'll walk beside you through the golden land…_

Diana inhaled, closing her eyes as she let the memories of the past take her. She could almost picture the exact cue of gold light from the tavern as Charlie plunked the keys and his voice rang true. _I haven't heard him sing in years…_

Steve's hand on hers. The way his arm pressed her close to him while they swayed.

Yes, she had embraced the unknown. She had embraced the uncertainty of love. Her heart had never even thought to ask her first.

"Do they have dancing on Paradise planet?"

The voice was more real than any memory could be. For one fleeting moment, her heart lifted and she turned. He was there, beside her, leaning against the bar with a glass in his hand. There was an easy smile, one she had seen many times before, both in her dreams and in those all-too-short days with him.

It took much longer than she wanted to admit the differences. First, it was the ale - the glass was wrong. It was no simple ale tumblr. Then, she caught a glance at his collar, then the rest of his gold uniform.

It was not Steve. He would never be Steve. _He is both the known and the unknown._

Diana cleared her throat and sat up, tapping the button on her padd to pause the music. She had not intended to avoid him, but his duties had kept him busy, and she had much to learn. _His name is James T. Kirk. He is not a pilot, he is not a spy._

"My apologies, captain, I didn't realize anyone would be in here this evening. I can leave, I am sure your day has been quite busy."

"Oh, yeah. Repair reports are my idea of exciting." He chuckled, more than a bit cynically before he slid into the bar stool beside her. When she made a move to stand, he held his hand up and ushered her back down. "No, no, please. I heard the music and was intrigued. It's a little too classical for my tastes, but it's the kind of thing you can dance to... I just wanted to see how you were settling in, I didn't mean to spook you."

Diana bristled at the notion that she could be spooked like a feline, and he noticed. "I was not spooked. I was merely respecting your captain's prerogative."

A grin lit up his features. "OK, well, as the captain, it's my prerogative to pick who I have a drink with. And I'm asking to have a drink with you, Miss Prince." He pointed at her with the hand still holding his glass. "Yeah, by the way, thanks for making sure I found out about your full name through requisition requests. It pinged like, three security alerts because your name belongs to a pre-Federation list of classified clearance personnel."

"I imagine it is from my involvement as a member of the Justice League." She forced herself to remain still and took a sip of her ale again. For some reason, while she expected the drink to have lost its appeal, it was what she needed to calm her nerves. It was if Charlie was still singing, bringing light and hope wherever he walked. "We were given varying levels of clearance before we stepped away."

"Yeah… funny thing, I looked you up. There's very little to go on that wasn't lost to the, uh, annals of time." Kirk pulled something from his pocket and set it in front of her. "But, apparently, I'm not the only one with an interest. Now, me looking into you makes sense. I'm the captain of the vessel you're a passenger on. But, it looks like someone way higher has plans for you."

Diana took the padd with a perplexed look his direction, but all he did was motion for her to read it for herself. He seemed amused. That made her feel all the more skeptical. She skimmed the letter quickly - maybe too quickly to catch pertinent details - but she had the jist of it in no time.

She set it down with a clack between them on the bar. "Someone has given me an ambassadorial position? For the Federation?"

He nodded and took a long swig of his glass before continuing. "Yup. Looks like someone in Starfleet read my report and liked what they heard about you wanting to help protect those who can't protect themselves." He shrugged. "I might have talked up the amazing warrior queen I found on this planet and how she wants to go back to 'being the bridge to greater understanding between all men…'" He squinted a bit in faux recollection. "At least, I think that's how you put it."

Diana knew that she could have been upset with him, but the turn in fortune was exactly what she'd been looking for. She laughed and shook her head at him. "You eavesdropped on my argument with Kal."

"I was in a cockpit less than ten meters away. I can say with certainty you do not get to be captain of a starship without an impeccable ability to overhear things." The two of them exchanged smiles as he clinked his glass to hers. "Cheers." They both downed another healthy swig, then fell silent.

She could tell he wanted to press the issue, but she didn't know what to say. So, she kept drinking until he finally could no longer stand it.

"Do you want the position? I mean, I can send back the response to Starfleet. It'll go right to the top brass and they'll clear it with the committee for that kind of thing." Kirk reached for the padd. Without thinking, she stopped him from taking it, her hand clutching his. When he finally arched an eyebrow at her, she gently pulled away, not sure she could trust her own overstimulated mind.

"I would like it…" She said. "Temporarily." He leaned back, clearly expecting more details. She obliged. "I do not know exactly what being an Ambassador entails in this time, but if it is what I expect, then I would very much enjoy it. But, I cannot commit to this Federation before I know the measure of its people."

"Well, you know me." He replied easily.

"We are acquainted, Captain Kirk, but there is much about each other we do not know - "

"Jim." She paused, and he set his glass down. "If you're gonna be on this ship, part of my crew, I'm not gonna have you calling me Captain if I can't call you 'Your Highness.' My friends call me Jim. And I would like to be your friend, Diana. I want to help you."

Touched by his sincerity, she relaxed under his gaze. For a moment, he could make her forget her world-weariness. "Help me with what?"

"I want to help you explore, to meet new peoples. To meet humanity again. Anything you want to know, I will tell you. It's all open to you. So," He took his glass again and held it up to her. "What do you say? Give it a try?"

Diana considered him, then took her own glass in hand. He was not Steve. He was Jim. Jim Kirk. And in that, he was someone altogether new. He was a force to be reckoned with and a compassionate soul. She could tell there was a darkness in him as she saw in all men, but a light that she could only barely glimpse.

"Yes. I will give it a try." She replied. "To this age of wonder." She went to touch his glass, then added: "Jim."

Jim touched his glass to hers with a resounding clink and nodded. "This age of wonder."


	6. Argentum Cygnus: Teaser

**Argentum Cyngus: Teaser**

 _Stardate 2264.30_

 _Personal logs: Ambassador Diana Prince, Federation Starship: NCC-1701-A: U.S.S Enterprise._

 _It has been nearly two weeks since I came aboard this great ship, this… floating city. A metropolis in space, the vessel has taken me to three new systems, five planets, and a nebula. In those two weeks, I have begun to forge bonds with some of the crew, and others I have revelled in simply observing._

 _It is a magical place. I see in these young men and women hope for the future. They thirst for the unknown, for what lies beyond each distant star. In the darkest hours, they pull together and continually excel past what the average man could hope to achieve when I was last on man's world._

 _Perhaps it is that Starfleet demands the best of the best._

 _But, I am hopeful that I see only one small part of the greater horizon. That humanity has truly become what Kal, Bruce, Barry, Arthur, Vic and I thought they could become. They have found their way to the stars. They are the stuff of myth and yet it is in their little moments that I see what I love about them. The way the Andorian ambassador finds new friends in the two engineers who simply had to share a drink. The most recent tryst of our good Ensign Chekov and the sincere apologies he issues every time he says or does something sadly indicative of his youth. I find new joy every time I share a cup of coffee with Lieutenant Uhura. We speak new languages. I truly enjoy Vulcan. It reminds me of my own tongue. The Themysciran dialect of Hellenistic Greek shares many of the same ebbs and flows as Commander Spock's tongue._

 _Klingon, Romulan, Vulcan…. Each of them rolls off the tongue with its own beauty and passion, and my newfound sister finds my quick learning infinitely fascinating._

 _Each new planet has brought another chapter in the Federation's politics to the forefront. Thankfully, technology has only grown more accessible to the average user, and I have surprised the captain at a number of junctures as I keep pace with his crew._

 _And I do believe it is genuine, innocent surprise. Jim is…_

 _He is… ._

 _What I mean is…_

The words were failing her. Again.

"Computer, end log." Diana breathed, closing her recording unit. The mess hall was relatively quiet in the small corner she occupied. With a steaming cup of raktajino, fresh from the kitchen, she had thought the strong brew would clear her mind while she people-watched. And to some extent, it had.

Almost none of the crew knew of her past on Earth.

She'd found great amusement in Chekov regaling Sulu with another tale of woe. It seemed that the young man was never without a broken heart over a beautiful soul - a very Russian affliction, in Diana's humble opinion. Apparently this time he lamented of a great beauty that he would never see again. She had a feeling it had to do with the _U.S.S. Farragut_. The _Enterprise_ had met up with the ship - apparently the second of her name - and the crews spent time together.

When Doctor McCoy had come into the mess hall, they had exchanged pleasantries, but he was in the midst of another medical mystery, so she let him go. This occurred many mornings much the same. One member of the bridge crew or the other would breeze through the mess hall, and she'd learn one bit of information or another. It was all still surface information, but they were moments Diana savored. She was so eager to learn of humanity, but she had so much to legally and politically learn, she had yet to delve into their past: to learn who they were, how they came to be here. Instead, she was content to see them as they wished any other new member of the Federation would see them.

Unfortunately, that also applied to the Captain.

Diana chuckled, shaking her head at her own silly behavior. In the last two weeks, she had found it easier to call him Jim and not Steve. But, it didn't stop her from attempting to compare him to his doppleganger. And it was absurd. She had seen something in him when they skirmished with the Romulans. Something unique to James Kirk. Yet, she felt as if attempting to pin him down, define him in any way, would somehow lead to more comparisons and do a disservice. In that way, he was _just_ like Steve. He crafted a persona as captain of the _Enterprise_.

She had promised him that she would learn the measure of this new mankind.

And part of that had to start with somehow measuring James T. Kirk. Measuring this persona that could not be defined, simply because she had nothing to compare it against. She could not see where Captain Kirk began and Jim ended, or if they did at all. And if they did not? If he was defined by that command chair, by the way his eyes burned with an inescapable lust for what lay beyond? Was that not as dangerous as the man who found himself buried in familiarity?

 _Observe due measure; moderation is best in all things._ Hesoid's words never seemed more poignant than upon this great behemoth. Was it man's magnum opus… or their greatest hubris?

If Jim Kirk knew nothing of his life outside of pursuit, as so many of the gods knew nothing of the mortality of man… how did he appreciate that blessing?

Diana grimaced and set her coffee down. That thought sounded suspiciously like the tempting, yet ultimately hollow words of her father, so many years ago. If she could speak with him again, she would tell him exactly how foolhardy the gods were. She did not need to lose Steve to know how desperately she ached for him in the years since. In time, the ache lessened, yes. But that time was no different than for a human who had only the years allotted to them.

The truth was, the heart did not care if one was mortal or everlasting. The heart only loved. When it lost, there were only two paths: sink into the hole left, or learn to grow around that.

Diana had filled that space with her mission to protect mankind, and later, the Amazons.

Now, she had an opportunity to do so again. And she was eager to do so. If that was hubris, then she and Jim Kirk had common ground.

" _Yellow alert. Senior officers report to the bridge._ " Lieutenant Uhura's voice carried over the ship comm as the wall consoles began to flash with yellow banners outside of their normal functionality.

Diana rose and set the cup of coffee in the recycler with one hand. In her other hand, she slipped the log padd into her pocket and strode towards the door. She was not technically a senior member of the staff. She was not an officer. But, she was hardly going to pass up another moment on the bridge.

She nodded to a crewman in greeting as she reached the turbolift, then slipped inside and keyed for the bridge, amused in spite of the somewhat serious call to stations.

What would she watch humanity stumble into today?


	7. Argentum Cygnus: Act I

**Argentum Cygnus: Act I**

To step onto the bridge of the _Enterprise_ was to join a waltz in progress. Carefully choreographed movements between individuals, between the ship's systems and the gentle hum of the vessel beneath them led to a swell of movement. Diana had taken quite some time before she learned to enjoy the more modern forms of dancing, but ultimately, it was a skill she valued.

This artistry was much the same here, yet there was knowledge Diana did not have and desperately craved. Every time she stepped onto the bridge, she found herself wondering what secrets Chekov had divined from his screen. She had been voraciously reading, learning as much as she could about the advances in technology since her days on Earth. That didn't mean she understood quantum mechanics in the slightest, though.

"Ambassador, good morning." Jim was standing in the midst of his shipmates, arms crossed over his chest as he looked back at her. He and Spock had been in discussion before she caught his eye. She was, as always, amused when people dropped lines of thought upon seeing her. Jim Kirk was no exception. "I hope I didn't just disappoint you. You didn't need to come up here."

Diana beamed, both amused and mischievous to the last. "Nonsense. I have quite enjoyed the hospitality of your crew, but even they must grow tired of all the time I spend in the mess hall. I wanted to see what had caught your attention."

Within moments, he had closed the distance between them and motioned for her to come down to the bridge to talk. "You know, it could have just been space dust."

"You don't go to yellow alert over space dust." She fired back, still with an easy smile. It was tempting to fall into such a pattern. In the times she came up here, the crew welcomed her with open arms as she observed them at work. They remained professional, if not a bit more friendly than she imagined they would be if she had not worked to get to know them outside of their duty shifts.

This was part of the problem. This was the only time she saw the captain.

In many ways, that was a relief. To see him less reminded her less of the ghost in her closet. A ghost that had rattled far less over the centuries, but was still her ghost. And to see him in the captain's chair, in uniform, giving orders, thinking through problems that would have - sadly - escaped Steve's knowledge of any scientific subject - had helped ease her subconscious desire to project the late captain onto the current one.

But, whether by necessity or design, having the two of them only cross paths on the bridge meant she still knew next to nothing about him when he was not on duty. She knew he could ride horses from their first real conversation in the observation lounge the night she had accepted her ambassadorial position. She knew that he enjoyed the illusion that he was constantly one moment away from being caught off-guard, yet he was always prepared before he walked into a room. She knew he liked to be called Jim by his friends.

But, friends one does not see are often lost to the daily race in life. While she could not say for certain why she wished to know Jim Kirk, she knew that she would need to force time between them at this rate. If not, she would lose the only other person who had seen her planet and thereby understood what she had left behind.

"So, if it isn't space dust," Diana forced herself back to the situation at hand. "What has caught your attention?"

Kirk motioned to Spock. The Vulcan rose an eyebrow, then turned his attention back to her. "We have found debris of a unique, unknown vessel in the vicinity. It seemed prudent to assume that we should be on guard."

Diana chuckled softly. She liked Spock. He reminded her of Artemis. The still waters ran deep. Where Artemis was disciplined as a warrior, Spock was the most disciplined scholar she had ever met. "That sounds intriguing." She nearly purred, interest genuinely piqued.

Kirk cleared his throat beside her, as if he was slightly put out that her attention wasn't where he wanted it to be. She might have been reading into his expression, but he looked back at the view screen before she could determine that. "Onscreen, Mister Chekov. Let's see what we've got."

The screen blinked from empty space to a corner of the void with a notable and distinctly foreign feature. At first, Diana thought she was staring at a mass of black, rotted vines, coiled together. She had seen such things in rainforests, even in the dark caves of Themyscira. It wasn't until she drifted closer another step that she realized… that was no moss. It was an unnatural gordian knot of metal. Those vines were pipes, and the entire sphere unsettled her in a way she could not describe.

" _Bozhe moi…_ "

Kirk laughed a bit. "Couldn't have said it better myself."

"Good God, what the hell is that rank mess?" Diana turned back to see Doctor McCoy standing where she'd indented the railing her first time here. It had since been repaired, much to the befuddlement of some crewman, she was sure, but the memory was still fresh. It was a subtle reminder to her that the ship was still vulnerable.

Kirk sighed. "Just once, Bones, you're gonna come up here and something won't mortify you."

"Have somethin' a little less nightmare-inducing next time and maybe I won't be." The doctor grumbled before he moved to stand near Diana. She smiled, happy to see him, but he would have none of it. He had already determined that the newest finding of the _Enterprise_ was a dangerous one. "I mean, just look at it, Jim. It looks like something off of Nero's ship got chewed up and spit out by a Denebian slime Devil."

Diana rose an eyebrow. "What is a - " The captain caught her eye and shook his head. She let the question die, but made sure to look up the term at a later juncture.

Instead, Diana gave her full attention to what McCoy was so casually insulting.

The sphere was dark and would have blended in with the blackness of space if it had not been for the faint green lights that occasionally pulsed somewhere within it. Instead of the sleek hull she had grown accustomed to on the _Enterprise_ and many other ships they had seen, she instantly thought of a ball of perhaps the filthy king rats she would see in cities. Dirty, smelly tails that knotted together, covered in feces and filth.

In the center, the vessel had been punctured. An ugly wound was indicative of an explosion or other violent endeavor to disavow the ship of its inner parts.

"It is… most unusual, Doctor McCoy." Diana conceded, trying to process the way the sight somehow turned her stomach cold. It was simply flotsam, but nevertheless, it struck her as unsettling and just… not quite normal. "I admit, I don't understand how any vessel could operate with a hull such as that one. It doesn't seem to have an atmosphere and it's… not… right." She faltered.

Again, the crew's eyes were on her, and again, she found herself more focused on the image before her than elaborating.

It was Kirk who finally spoke. That voice always instantly drew her attention. Again, every time she tried to distance herself, he would speak or look her way, and she had to force the comparisons away. "How do you mean?"

She tilted her head, still watching the sphere as it drifted aimlessly. "I'm not sure, but… It doesn't _feel_ right. It isn't the way a… a person would build something."

"A surprisingly mono-speciest viewpoint, Ambassador." Spock remarked, his tone almost disappointed. Diana tore her eyes from the sphere to regard him. "Many humanoid species equip a variety of structures that humans would find unnecessary."

She shook her head. "That's not what I mean. I'm not saying that a _human_ wouldn't build this. I'm saying that a flesh and blood creature, organic, would not build this." She crossed the distance of the bridge down to the viewport, then pointed at the way the "pipes" threaded over each other. "This type of architecture is more reminiscent of plant life. The way vines gradually grow over each other. But, even if a person - alien or humanoid - could grow metal, why would they grow it in such a fashion? There is no atmosphere, no viewpoint by which to see the world around them. There is no indication that the species that built this sees anything, experiences anything."

Spock quirked an eyebrow. "Perhaps the species does not have visual sight organs."

Diana spun, lips pursed. There was something wrong. As her aunt was so fond of saying, she could _feel it in her bones._ "I understand what you mean, Commander. I assure you, I don't mean it as a slight."

"Nevertheless - "

"I will apologize for my ignorance of the species when we meet them," Diana offered. Her heart sank a bit at the notion that she could just be… ignorant of a new people. She never wished to judge any alien race for simply being different.

But, she could not shake how unsettling this was.

"Well, we don't even know if anyone's aboard to apologize to, Diana, so I think you're alright." Kirk said with a wink.

Diana smiled back at him, trying not to let on that the expression also felt… _not right_. But, she had taken what Spock said to heart. She would have to reconsider how her understanding of man's world, once terrestrial, could color her experiences now. "Thank you, Captain, but I value Commander Spock's advice."

The first officer nodded, the two of them having reached an unspoken understanding.

She was not surprised one bit that Dr. McCoy chose to interrupt the companionable silence.

"Oh, good god, Jim, you brought a philosopher on board, and now she's gonna be on the pointy-eared bastard's side." He lamented.

Jim cast a dramatic roll of his eyes towards the other man, then focused his attention back to the screen. "Well, are there any lifesigns? Because, if there aren't, it's still a hypothetical conversation."

As Chekov tapped a button to begin a scan, Diana crossed her arms over her chest as she got lost in the ever-growing starscape before her. She was never going to get tired of it. It made what she left seem so far away…

"One lifesign, sir." Chekov finally answered. "But, eh, it's wery faint."

Kirk didn't miss a beat. "Can we beam them up? Send them to sickbay?"

Another moment. Another scan. "Ah, no, sir. Zere's too much interference. It's… hard to pick out ze precise location of ze lifesign. It's almost like zey are.. In ze wall?"

Diana cast a glance around the bridge. Everyone seemed as perplexed by that statement as Chekov himself was as he said it. She took every effort not to focus specifically on what the captain was thinking. This crew operated much like the Amazons did in battle: independent but unified under a leader. If Kirk thought his crew had a good suggestion or perspective, he would absolutely listen to them. It was yet another divergence between Kirk and Steve. Steve took his marching orders and diverged from his plan when a better idea came along. His collaborations with his team were much more happenstance than openness. Kirk had taken the skills Steve had only barely grown comfortable with and turned it to a fine art: another part of the dance.

"The ship is completely silent, captain." Uhura spoke up, her hand pressing her earpiece close, as if she could divine a hint of noise if she waited long enough. "I mean, there's normally something, but there's not even a jamming system."

"Then, I guess we'll have to go over and knock." Kirk mused. That mischievous glint in his eye had quickly become indicative of an adventure waiting to happen. "Spock, I want you and Murray to meet me in the shuttle bay. Let's go check it out - "

"Captain." Diana wasn't able to stop herself from interrupting. She left the viewscreen behind, instead making her way over to him. He was already halfway to the turbolift, but he'd pivoted mid-step to face her. "Actually, I would like to be on the away team."

Spock was clearly preparing an objection, but Kirk held his hand up to stop him as he gave Diana his full attention. "No offense, Ambassador, but I can't authorize that. This isn't an ambassadorial mission - "

"On the contrary," Diana mirrored Kirk's body language, crossing her arms over her chest. "As Commander Spock mentioned, this is a vessel of unknown origin. It could be a new species, and if that is the case, then it is my duty as a Federation Ambassador to help welcome them. You said it yourself, Jim, you wanted to help me explore and meet new civilizations."

The look on Kirk's face went from placid to knowing he'd been caught the moment she called him Jim. Since the familiarity between the two of them was infrequently used, it had the desired effect of making him acquiesce. He chuckled and shook his head, seemingly unable to form a sufficient rebuttal.

"Well, Jim," Dr. McCoy clapped his friend on the shoulder and sent Diana a sidelong glance on his way to the turbolift. "Now you've gone and done it. You're stuck with her now. You went and told a queen she could do whatever she wanted and you'd help."

Diana rose an eyebrow at him, softly chuckling in mock-offense. "That would be _former_ queen."

* * *

In wearing an atmospheric space suit for the first time, Diana found that cold, unsettled feeling in her stomach only grow. She, Kirk and Spock docked the shuttle against the hull breach on the sphere, but they still had to float into the vessel. It wasn't the zero gravity that bothered her - that was no different than flying.

It was this _ship_.

Diana took a breath to steady herself as her boots locked on magnetically to the exposed walkway. It was comforting to hear her own breath echo back to her and the satisfying hiss of oxygen in the helmet. But, it could only do so much to allay her concerns with the serpentine tubes and mechanical walls. The entire sphere crawled with technology.

" _The life sign is approximately 20 meters in that direction, Jim._ " Spock pointed ahead of them. Slowly, vigilant of their surroundings, the trio made their way towards the life sign.

The walkway veered to the right to avoid some sort of core computer console. While the two men went forward, Diana's feet came to a halt. There was something familiar about something within that console. Tilting her head, she stepped closer and brought up the wrist light on her suit. She knew what that was… she had seen too many of them….The chrome glinted in the powerful light.

" _Jim."_ She breathed, hoping that her trepidation had not come through in her voice. The signal would have carried to the others, no matter how far they were. " _We need to get off this ship._ "

She turned, realized they were out of sight, then rushed to catch up. The magnetic lock on the boots made her stride more intimidating than she intended, but she hoped it would get their attention. Her wrist light swung around the corridor, this time catching sight of another piece of chrome welded against a broken pipe. This time, her light traced the symbol etched into it, plain as day.

The Greek letter Omega. The banner of an enemy she had not seen in years.

And as she scanned the attempted repairs, it became clear that the banner was _everywhere._

Diana forced down another cold shiver of fear and focused on finding Jim and Spock. She had to find them. This was not a vessel they wanted to be in for long.

" _The hull breach that we entered through seems to be the result of a concussive blast of some kind."_ Spock continued somewhere beyond her, but she could hear him clear as day in her helmet. _"I do not recommend we stay here any longer than necessary, Jim. The integrity of this derelict is dropping rapidly._ "

" _Well, as soon as we find our lifeform, we'll get back._ "

By the time she reached them, Kirk and Spock had run into a similar mystery down the hall.

Kirk's wrist light was trained on a body on the ground. At least, it was part of a body. There was very little of the Vulcan that had been merged with machinery. The left side of his face was covered in cybernetic implants, and from the neck down, it was unclear if the individual was covered in technology or _was_ technology.

" _Spock, am I seeing what I think I'm seeing?_ "

Spock's expression was understandably troubled, and backlit by the lights in his helmet. It only made him look more severe. _"The deceased is a Vulcan male, approximately 82 years of age at the time of death. But, he seems to have been fitted with cybernetic implants on approximately 75% of his body."_

" _I have seen this before."_ Diana swept her light over the body, pausing at the unique ocular implant on the Vulcan's face. " _Not in such an… industrial sense. But, one of my colleagues. Vic was almost entirely cybernetic in nature because of technology his father experimented with."_ Diana could feel her stomach drop, and she reached out to take Kirk's arm. _"Jim, listen to me. We must go. Now."_

He turned to look at her, looking dismissive until he caught her expression. She knew how fearsome she looked, but it was nothing compared to how scared she felt beneath. _"Diana, what is it?"_

" _I have seen the technology in this ship before."_ The grated flooring rumbled beneath them, and from the way the pipes began to leak and belch some sort of plasma exhaust.

" _So have we. There's bits of Romulan and Klingon technology strapped in all over the place."_ He motioned past them. _"We should find the lifeform and go back. This thing's falling apart._ "

Diana held so fast to his arm that when Kirk turned to move, he was tugged back in place. He looked down at her hand on his arm, then back up to her face. She simply shook her head. _"They have a motherbox. From Apokolips. We cannot be here if it awakens._ " She had not seen Darkseid in centuries. She had no desire to give the _Enterprise_ crew to him. She was growing more convinced that this was a trap. " _This place has technology that I know, as well as technology from races around the quadrant that you recognize. If Darkseid knows that we are here, if he is somehow still alive and has set this trap, then we are in grave danger._ "

Jim simply watched her, clearly not following her train of thought. " _Who the hell is Darkseid? Diana, you're losing me here, I have no idea what you're talking about."_

" _I told you this place was unnatural - "_

" _Captain._ " Spock had continued on as the two of them had argued, presumably still on the trail. _"I believe I have found our lifesign._ "

Diana released Jim's arm. She knew there was no point in stopping him, and she would not leave them alone. She followed him, step by magnetic step, down the corridor until they reached the first officer. Jim had completely stilled beside Spock.

When she reached the same viewpoint as them, Diana's mind also went still. There were no parademons and no Darkseid, but danger still waited to pounce in the darkness. But, she could not visit that same fear on the person before her, sitting on the ground, leaning against a gutted wall.

A human - or humanoid - woman. Her skin was the same mottled grey as the others they had seen, but she had far less by way of cybernetic implants than the corpse they had seen before. They could still see her bare arms, covered in a spider web of small metal tendrils digging into her skin. Wires jabbed into her head, the entry points puckered as if the tissue had rejected the intrusion. From the green pus that had crusted on her skin, it would have been most painful.

" _She is alive, but barely._ " Spock said, eyes on his tricorder. " _Only 30% of her body has been augmented with cybernetic implants. It appears from her white blood cell count that she her body is attempting to reject the foreign matter."_

" _She's a fighter…_ " Diana crouched down beside the slumped figure, reaching out cautiously towards her face.

" _Diana, don't -_ " Jim protested, but she ignored him.

Her fingers brushed against the cheek of the woman. Through the gloves of the suit, she could tell that the skin was still pliable. She still looked so human compared to the other corpse they had seen. She _was_ human. Diana's breath caught in her throat, warmth in her eyes bringing her closer and closer to tears.

" _Who would do this to her?_ " She breathed, her voice thick and low. _"_ _ **Why**_ _would they do this?"_

The firm hand on her shoulder steadied her, and for a moment, she could not have been more glad that it was Captain James T. Kirk that crouched beside her and not Steve. This was not her world, it was not Steve's. This was something hellish born from her past, but Kirk's present. When he squeezed her shoulder, she could tell from his even tone that he was unfazed. _"There's only one way to find out."_ He muttered. The ship rattled beneath them, and this time, did not stop. _"Come on. Like you said, it's time to go._ "

Steeling herself, Diana nodded and forced herself to her feet. Carefully, she picked the woman off of the walkway. She carried her back to the shuttle, cradled in her arms, and set her down on the bench in the aft section. Heavy-hearted, she sunk down beside her, guardian and support.

What could possibly have been so evil? And how could they have Darkseid's torturous technology?


	8. Argentum Cygnus: Act II

**Argentum Cygnus: Act II**

All hospitals shared the same anesthetic and unnerving quality.

No matter how much Doctor McCoy had attempted to make it more appealing to the crewmembers of the _Enterprise_ , it was not enough to make Diana feel any less concerned for the woman before her. Prone on the biobed, the cybernetic implants occasionally twitching, she was the picture of suffering. Doctor McCoy had assured Diana that he sedated her and gave her a painkiller, but he had no guarantee it would make a difference until he could begin to run tests on her.

Tests. Blood drawn. Sedation.

This was no way to treat a victim of such abuse.

Amazons were not known to coddle the walking wounded. If one was injured, but could still fight, then wounds were dressed and later examined with careful hands and hearts. But, those who could _not_ fight, they were treated with reverence and kindness. If Epione, with her gentle voice and touch, could see the sterile and cold hospitals of man's world, she would have immediately told Diana to take her to Themyscira.

 _I would seat her on the warm beach,_ Epione would say. _To help bring color back to her cheeks, to help her body grow strong enough to fight off this infection on her own. No illness is without struggle. The body does not like to be challenged, but it is only in doing so that we break it down and make it better._

Diana found herself longing for the simple days of the island. Before the planet, before the Justice League, before Steve, before Antiope…

She pulled up a chair beside the biobed, watching her charge as she leaned back. With one leg crossed over the other, Diana looked the picture of serenity, save for the furrow of her brow.

 _Who are you?_ She thought, scanning her features. _What madness took you from your life and brought you to this state? How can I help you when I do not even understand what it is that's been done?_

There was something strangely familiar about her as well. It wasn't as though Diana could place her face, but something in her subconscious told her that there was _a connection_ there. If only she knew what that could be.

"Well, she's the strongest damn individual I think I've ever seen deal with this kind of invasive procedure, that's for sure."

Diana picked her head up as Doctor McCoy's drawl caught her attention. He had finally come out of the lab, holding a data pad and stylus while he scanned his results. As he approached her, she stood to give him her full attention. "Doctor, what did you find? Do you have any idea what happened to her?"

McCoy looked up at her, lips puckered a bit in thought before he finally spoke. "Ambassador, I don't reckon you're gonna like any of what I have to say - "

She crossed her arms and squared off. "I think we both know I am hardly a delicate flower. I do not need you to treat me as one. What did your tests reveal?"

McCoy cleared his throat and shrugged, taking the rebuke in stride. Most likely, he realized it was a futile effort to try to shield her from any of this. He was the only other member of the crew who knew almost as much as Kirk about her past. He had required a bioscan once the crisis with the planet had ended, and she'd been happy to oblige to an extent. When his scans had been "damned near impossible", she had offered to allow him more extensive testing at a later date. In the meantime, she had explained who she was on Themyscira and that she was older than she looked. It had seemed sufficient for him at the time.

"Well, this poor girl has been through the ringer. I can't find her information on any Federation database, but she doesn't seem to be human, either. She looks it, but, her bioscans are more like a half step between me and…" He sighed, meeting Diana's concerned gaze. "Well, like you."

Diana's world momentarily dropped out from under her. She whipped her head around to face the woman on the bed. For a brief moment, she found herself in awe. Had they found another god? Were there answers in this woman's mind she did not have? Then, she considered the full scope of McCoy's assessment. Not _quite_ like Diana.

"Are you saying she is Themysciran?" _Perhaps that is why she feels so familiar..._

"I'm saying I don't know what she is, 'sides a tortured soul that's been fighting off these cybernetic implants since the moment they were shoved into her." Doctor McCoy crossed to the other side of her, then set his padd down on the table beside him. He braced his hands on the edge of the biobed. The way his shoulders had bunched with tension gave her the impression that he was deeply concerned. "I know that pre-Federation Earth performed a number of cybernetic experiments before we learned how to regenerate tissue and grow bone. But, I've never seen anything like this. Whoever did this, they used nanotechnology and they didn't give a damn what they did to her body in the process."

"Nanotechnology..." Diana's heart clenched as she recalled the painful process by which Vic had been brought back into the world of men. "Then it might have been him…" The only reference to this level of dramatic change had been in the near-destruction of Earth, in the creature whose darkness had spread over her beloved homeland and threatened to crush it. His wrath had cost the lives of countless Amazons. It had left her people bruised and in limited numbers.

If he was out there, among the stars… Would she find him one day? Could she even confront him again without the League?

"Ambassador?" McCoy had turned to her, but her vision was locked on an absent point on the far wall as her thoughts overtook her. "Diana. You still with me?"

She inhaled, collecting her thoughts and drawing herself to full height before she addressed him and focused her vision on him. "Yes, I am."

"Okay…" McCoy rose an eyebrow. "Who's 'him?' What's got you as nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs?"

She scoffed. "I don't know if nervous is the right word. But, what I saw on that sphere, what you're telling me now… it is far too reminiscent of an enemy I faced in my past. On Earth in the 2010s and 2020s. Darkseid, the God-King of Apokalips."

To his credit, Dr. McCoy's face looked appropriately ashen, even if his tone was light. "Jesus, that sounds like a cheery fellow…"

"We thought we had defeated him, yet…" She motioned idly to his patient. "He could have done this. And if he did…" Diana swallowed thickly. "I do not know how your Federation could stop him."

McCoy crossed his arms and leaned against the biobed, clearly taking stock of her. He paused for what seemed to be an inordinate amount of time before he finally shrugged. "Well, we're not gonna know unless the sonuvabitch hits us in the backside, so I'm gonna focus on helping my patient best I can. The best way I can do that is figure out who she is, what she might still remember about who did this to her, and to get these damn implants out of her."

In that, Diana found comfort. The sickbay may have seemed less inviting, but the medical staff, especially Doctor McCoy, were no less qualified and did not match their surroundings. She had heard the crew tease him about his bedside manner, but in this moment, she could see that clearly cared about this woman and would do everything he could to help her. "Can you wake her?"

"I could, but… I wouldn't. Not until I have some notion of what those things are doing to her. She might not even be able to speak. Poor thing could be locked into her head like a vegetable, given how these neural implants are directly jabbed into her frontal lobe." He motioned to the now cleaned area of her skull. Where there had been crusted infection, it was freshly green and swollen as her body tried for another countless time to reject the foreign object.

Perhaps she could not speak, but…

"I think I can help with that." Diana slipped her hand under her jacket. While she had grown accustomed to civilian garb, she had changed once she arrived back on the _Enterprise_. The sphere, the victim, the signs of Apokalips, they had all led her back to her armor. Her security. Her second skin.

Diana heard the doors to sickbay open just as she pulled the golden lasso free from its hook underneath her jacket. The moment it touched her skin, it began to glow, brilliant gold against the reds and browns of her clothing.

"Diana, what are you doing?" Ah, the captain had come to check on the situation now that he had received the sensor logs from the _Enterprise._

She turned, holding the lasso tight in one hand, still in its coil, offering him a bit of a smile. "Doctor McCoy has determined this woman shares many similarities to my people. She may be Themysciran."

Kirk rose his eyebrows, glancing from the doctor then back to her. He nodded some, then pointed to her hand. "Still not sure why that means you need the rope." As he had done upon seeing her in armor the first time, upon realizing Kal-El was Superman, Jim had immediately begun to focus on satisfying his curiosity. "I've been meaning to ask you: are you telekinetic? Is that how it whipped around all on its own while you were kicking Romulan butt - "

"The lasso of Hestia reveals the truth to those who touch it." She replied evenly, careful to keep it out of his curious hands. "And it compels those who are bound by it to tell the truth. It also responds to my wishes in battle."

Jim's look of befuddlement was almost enough to lighten the mood in the room. When he finally replied, she nearly laughed. "You could've just said you didn't want to tell me you were telekinetic."

Diana shook her head. "I'm not. It is the magic of the lasso. A gift from the goddess to the Amazons. If you do not believe me, I will show you."

The two men exchanged glances and nodded.

"What happened to the ship she was on?" McCoy asked Jim took up a position beside him. "You find anything we can use to help her?"

The captain shrugged. "Vaporized a few minutes ago. We think it was some sort of latent self-destruct that didn't go off when it should. Whatever secrets it had went with it. One thing's for sure: whoever jettisoned that sphere did _not_ want this woman to survive."

Diana turned her focus to the biobed, moving within arms' reach before unfurling the lasso a foot or so. With painstaking care, she wound the lasso around the woman's exposed forearm. The spider web network of metal that had been trying to dig into skin hissed as sacred heat from the lasso melted the metal into ash.

McCoy took a step towards her, but she shook her head, eyes still on the lasso. "Do not worry, Doctor. The lasso will not harm her. Hestia cleanses those who are innocent. She is the guardian of all that is pure."

"Jim…"

"Relax, Bones. It'll be okay." Jim's voice sounded somewhere between enraptured and casual. She could not understand how he had mastered such a balance.

She drew her breath, settling it deep in her belly before exhaling slowly. It had been so long since she had drawn the truth through the lasso in this way, and while it wasn't exhausting, it was a focused effort to control what one could see.

"Sister…" Diana exhaled, holding the lasso tight. "Show me who you are."

* * *

 _ **WE ARE THE BORG.**_

 _Bright eyes, looking towards the horizon. An opportunity of a lifetime. To leave the shores of Themyscira, to see the world beyond - man's world!_

 _ **YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED.**_

 _Too many images, too many memories. Lovers, friends, family. The palace. The Queen - Hippolyta herself has given blessing to the venture!_

 _So much excitement. Wonder, like a child. To see the world - to see space! Space! Watchtower as a launch point, NASA has approved the project. They want her, she's been accepted. The first Themysciran in space!_

 _ **YOUR BIOLOGICAL AND TECHNOLOGICAL DIFFERENCES WILL BE ADDED TO OUR OWN.**_

 _The Princess sees her off. Bright eyes, full of hope and wonder -_ _ **Wonder Woman!**_ _\- She will be proud of her people._

 _The Cygnus. The Cygnus is her ship. They call her the Swan when she launches. Her call sign. But, not her name. Her name is -_

 _ **WE ARE THE BORG.**_

 _No! The ship, power is failing. How is she so far from Saturn? How did she get here? The stars are all wrong - it's all wrong!_

 _ **YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED.**_

 _Green light from beyond the cockpit - a ship, a vessel! Did the Lanterns find her? Yes! Of course, they are the Guardians of space, of course they would find her!_

 _Those aren't Lanterns. Why don't they answer her transmissions?_

 _Home. She wants to go home._

 _ **YOUR BIOLOGICAL AND TECHNOLOGICAL DIFFERENCES WILL BE ADDED TO OUR OWN.**_

 _ **It hurts!**_ _Why won't they stop? They won't stop, they won't be quiet, there are too many thoughts, too many voices! She is Vanessa!_ _ **She is Borg.**_

 _ **SHE IS VANESSA!**_

 _Why won't they be quiet? It's never quiet. Too many voices, too many voices, someone help her. She's screaming and no one's listening._

 _Someone save her._

 _Someone kill her._

 _ **RESISTANCE IS FUTILE.**_

* * *

Diana could not breathe. She pulled back, dropping the lasso and stumbling so far back she nearly collapsed.

"Gods, no…" She choked, tears falling unabashedly from her eyes. Her feet keep carrying her further away, as if to escape the torrent of fear, of agony, of helplessness that threatened to drag her into the darkness. "She is one of mine…" She gasped, mortified. "I gave her my _blessing…._ "

Her knees threatened to collapse. The onslaught of shared emotions were too much to bear. She had experienced pain, she had been tortured, but she had never felt such raw _panic._ The very sickbay was starting to fade before her eyes as the very unfamiliar sensation of hopelessness threatened to overwhelm her.

"Diana…" Steve. His voice seemed so far away. Too far. She would never see him again. She would be clawing to escape the voices alongside Vanessa, and neither of them would ever see relief. There was no hope. There was no point. There was no point to life…

"Bones, get me a chair…" An arm looped around her waist and led her away. But, it couldn't save her from the clawing sense of dread. It had all been for _nothing_. And Steve still sounded so far away… sweet Steve… **dead** Steve.. "What the hell did that thing do to her?"

"I haven't got a clue, but her vitals are all over the place. I'd give her a sedative, but, I don't have the right dosage information. Jesus, Jim, she looks like someone sucked the life out of her."

Diana shook her head slowly, shaking, haunted. What was this? Why could she not see any way out of this darkness? The despair, the loneliness…. There was no point to living….

"Diana!" She could feel a hand on her arm, but it felt hollow. It all felt so far away. "Come on, Diana, it's Jim. Don't go and ruin that perfect streak of me thinking you're invincible now." The hand left from her arm, then suddenly appeared against her cheek. It was warm. It wasn't Steve. It wasn't her heartbreak.

It was Jim. Jim Kirk. It was the captain of the _Enterprise._ He was very much alive. He was fearless. He was in awe of everything. He was _not_ pointless. "Jim…" She breathed, shocked at how her voice sounded foreign to her own ears.

"You're safe, Diana… you're okay. Whatever you saw…. It didn't happen. Not to you."

 _Not to me…_

Diana finally broke from the spell. Her eyes closed and the tears finally began to ease. She leaned into the warm touch of his hand. After the clawing darkness and palpable loneliness, the hand of ice that had clutched her heart, she didn't care who was touching her, breaking down careful walls of personal space she normally kept up. She craved human contact in the most basic, primal sense. She needed to chase away the sensation of being _alone_.

She realized that she had no idea how long she had been lost in that emotional pit. She assumed it had been hours, but she knew logically that it had probably only been moments. The mind could stretch a heartbeat into an epic, a breath into a treatise.

Diana barely brushed her hand against Jim's before she clutched it in thanks, then released it and stood on her own. She didn't open her eyes until she was drawn to her full height, determined to show no more of her fear than she already had. She could admit that she had been terrified, but she would not be crippled by it. She was an Amazon, a warrior of valor. She faced insurmountable odds and smiled.

When her eyes opened, Jim Kirk was entirely too close for what she had expected, and real concern had colored his features. His brow was knit with worry, and his eyes seemed more steel than ocean. He was Jim. He was the captain.

He was in danger, as were all the others on this ship.

"She was an astronaut." Diana finally offered, then motioned to Vanessa when Jim didn't seem to follow. He turned as she continued, then made her way back over to gently unwind the lasso. This time, she kept her mind closed from its gift of truth. "I met her. She was born long before I had been made manifest, but I did not see much of her. She and I trained in different arts. When I left for Man's world, I had not seen her in some time. I assumed that she had become a scholar of maths like the great minds she studied." She set the lasso back on the hook under her jacket, then cautiously reached out to brush her fingers against the woman's cheek. If she could reach her, bring her from that darkness, she would. "She was sent on a deep space mission and I gave her my blessing. I was proud that another of my sisters wished to see and help man's world after Darkseid's devastation." Diana's fingers faltered in their gentle caress. "But, they never made it to Alpha Centauri."

Jim had stepped up beside her. He was closer than she had let him be in the past, but her mind was focused on the suffering of her sister. She was not thinking of Steve, or any of her other connections from man's world. She could only hear Vanessa's screams as they tore her from her ship.

"She is Vanessa, of the house Katalepis. She was born to one of the Amazons before we were enslaved. They flew a vessel called the Argentum Cygnus."

Jim only replied, "I've heard of it. The name was unique in the era of 'Friendship One's.' They were the first deep space pre-warp flight, and one of two that went missing."

She nodded. "They must have pulled her vessel off-course. She thought they were…" Diana paused, her voice threatening to fail her. "She thought they were from the Green Lantern Corps."

"No one's heard of those yahoos in at least a century." McCoy grumbled. That ashen pallor had returned.

"They call themselves the Borg." The very name turned to ash in her mouth. She could hear the cacophony of unified thought and voice, the way it demanded that you acquiesce. "They took her and they… assimilated her. That's what they called it. They added these pieces to her and they made her think she was one of them." She shook her head, voice a bit hollow as she felt herself drifting towards the black again. "They made her lose hope. They made her lifeless."

Diana finally turned to face Jim, her dark hair spilling over her shoulders as she moved. She wanted to tell him everything. He needed to understand why it had chilled her so. This was Darkseid. Somehow… in some impossible way, these Borg had crossed paths with Darkseid.

"And you saw that nightmare through a piece of tinsel?" McCoy broke the tense silence as he programmed a hypospray in hand. He shook his head. "Sure as hell glad my ex-wife doesn't have one of those things…" He paused, glancing up at Diana. "Any idea why she was the only one left on that sphere?'

Diana shook her head, replaying the flood of images that had come to her. "I don't know for certain, but… she was fighting. She never stopped rejecting the implants. I can see how many times they tried to assimilate her and… every time, she began to cry out, to be freed." Diana's hand clutched the biobed so hard, she heard the metal give under. This time, she made no move to hide it. "They thought she was a failure. They tossed her out like trash."

Jim glanced back at the doctor. "Bones, can you give us a minute?"

Doctor McCoy scoffed. "What'd she just do to my biobed?"

"Just…. A minute. Please?" Jim begged.

McCoy nodded and headed for his office. "Don't do anything stupid while I prep more anti-inflammatories for her wounds."

Diana didn't know how to thank Jim for the kindness, but once they were alone in the sickbay, she relaxed. She let out a deep breath, running her hands through her hair and paced in a small circle to help her steady her nerves.

For a long moment, neither of them spoke. When Jim finally decided to break the peace, she was already expecting the question. "Are you gonna be alright? I didn't think you got scared of anything, seeing as how you were - are - an immortal warrior trained by Amazons. That's a lot of badass stacked up in one package." He was trying to lighten the mood, but his expression was still that same concerned furrow of his brow. Again, his openness struck her in its genuine nature.

"I'll be fine once we help her. She cannot fight those demons alone."

"You don't seem fine." He remarked.

"Being rattled doesn't render me immobile." Diana knew she was a little too quick to dismiss the concern, and the moment she did so, she held her hand up to stop Jim from interrupting. "But, I _am_ worried."

"We haven't seen any sign that the sphere has had power recently. And if it did come from a larger vessel, there's no sign of it."

"That doesn't mean the danger is gone. There is a great darkness in those creatures." She said. "And I have seen that darkness before."

Jim leaned against one of the free biobeds. "When you were Wonder Woman. I get the impression there's a _lot_ you've seen that you haven't told me about."

"Because it is my past, not yours." She tried not to let her frustration show. "Kal and I left Earth in the hands of our apprentices and successors. They led you here, to this Federation of peace and prosperity. But, it was not always so attainable. You made war, you fought each other for food, for money, simply because you looked different from one another."

"Diana, I know you think we're some utopian society, but we're not perfect." His expression was resigned, almost ashamed. "We still fight."

"But you value freedom." She argued. "Darkseid does not. And neither do these Borg. And when you stop believing and valuing such things, it becomes that much harder to beat him. We sacrificed many lives to stop Darkseid before. And when it was through, I begged my mother to make Themyscira a haven." In trying to warn him, she had come to the crux of her discomfort. "I encouraged refugees to come to Themyscira. I wished for my people and my culture to thrive after the decimation of our forces by Darkseid. But, I never intended to leave man's world."

Jim's eyes widened. He understood her now. "You feel like you should have been here. For us." He nodded to Vanessa. "For her."

"Yes. And now, I have so much to learn about the time I missed. If Darkseid returns..."

Jim pushed off of the biobed and made his way over to her. "Diana, I have no doubt in my mind that if you stopped him before, you'd be able to do it again. And I know we're not a bunch of superpowered, enhanced vigilantes, but we're no slouches. We'd be right there with you to make sure these things never go anywhere near Earth."

She could feel her heart finally settle into a comfortable pulse again. "I know. And I believe you. But, the lasso shares more than just thoughts and images with me. I could feel her emotions. I cannot stomach the thought that another individual must go through such pain." Diana found her gaze drifting back to her pale sister. "But, we must help her. And wake her up. I wish to do that even less."

Jim's hand brushed her arm, and the action caught her off-guard. "I can't imagine how hard this is for you. You left our world thinking everything would be fine and right now, it's just a great, big mess." The words rung against the base of her neck eerily.

Doctor McCoy chose that moment to stride back into sickbay. Either he had overheard that their conversation had reached another peak, or he simply had no patience left. She didn't particularly want to know which.

"I think I've figured out the dosage to bring her back to consciousness. Can't guarantee how she'll do." He motioned for a nurse to follow him over, then finished coding a couple of hyposprays. "These amino acid chains should help her body fight off more of the nanites until I figure out if I can purge her bloodstream."

" _If_? " Jim frowned. "That's not very like you, Bones."

He ignored them both and finished administering the hypospray with a hiss. "I'll have time to be cocky about it once I know she won't wake up and try to kill us all." He turned to his left. "Nurse, stay here, administer a dose in 20 seconds of the trianoline. That should decrease some of that cranial swelling."

"Yes, Doctor." The young crewman replied. As McCoy stepped back to talk with Jim and Diana, the man stood vigil in their stead, monitoring lifesigns.

"I gotta tell you, Jim, I don't like this." McCoy grumbled. "The whole thing smells rotten. If these Borg are anywhere near this nebula, I say we hightail it back to Starfleet."

Jim shook his head and in a moment, Diana noticed the subtle switch from Jim to Captain Kirk. His mind was on the bigger picture. "Bones, I'm not gonna do that until we know what we're dealing with."

"We know exactly what we're dealing with!" He hissed, motioning to Diana. "She just told us! They're called the Borg, they like to truss people up in Christmas lights and make them part of their cyborg hivemind."

"We don't have any evidence that they're still out here!" Jim snapped, careful to keep his voice low as well, but no less determined. "Until we wake her up, we won't know if we're leading them back to a station like _Yorktown_ , or worse, Earth itself."

"Well, that's real damn noble of you, Jim, but if we get killed before we can get the word out, how do you plan on warnin' them then, huh?"

The monitors beeped behind the group and each of them turned their attention back to Vanessa. The nurse was hovering over her, checking her vitals and administering the hypospray.

"She's coming to, Doctor."

Diana moved forward, praying to whatever gods might listen that she was not in more pain than what she had sensed. She reached the biobed and watched as Vanessa's eyes slowly opened and began to examine the room.

At first, it seemed that she was sluggish, irritable. It was only after the woman glimpsed Diana that she paused, head tilting.

"W… w…" Her mouth tried to form words as she stared at Diana, wide-eyed and pale. Her voice, rough from misuse, still had the mechanical vocal flange that she'd heard in her mind. But, it was one voice, not many. And she was trying to reach out. "Wo…" The eyes grew more wide as she stared at the figure in front of her.

Diana's eyes threatened to blur with tears as she forced a smile, nodding. "Yes. Wonder Woman. Do you remember me, Vanessa? It's me, Diana."

"D… d… Di...ana…" The voice struggled to work, the eyes struggled to see. And she could feel it in her bones. Vanessa was in there, trying to remember how to speak once more.

"Yes. And I promise you, Sister, I will take you back home to our people."

The glimmer of recognition that Diana had seen faded in an instant. Vanessa's pupil's dilated and her body stiffened.

"Vanessa?" Diana tried again, hoping she could stop her from fading away. Instead, the woman sat up abruptly and turned to the nurse. Her other arm stretched out, hand balled into a fist. "No, don't hurt him!" Metal _veins_ shot out from her hand. Like a viper, they stung the nurse in the neck just before Diana could reach across and grab hold of him.

It took all of Diana's strength to pull Vanessa away from the nurse as he turned pale, his veins blossoming in a sickening purple as he stumbled away. He fell into the crash cart behind him, and Doctor McCoy was instantly at his side. He was shouting, demanding help, but the words vanished into the back of her mind as she tried desperately to hold the Amazon-turned-drone in her arms, bearhugged.

"We are the Borg." Vanessa growled, remarkably calm. No, not calm. _Lifeless._ Mechanical. "You will be assimilated. This unit will add your technological and biological uniqueness to our own. We are the Borg. This unit… will…" Vanessa's body began to shake as she attempted to turn those viper fangs towards the woman holding her. "Will… assimilate… D-D-D-Diana…"

"No, Vanessa, please. You are not one of them, you are an Amazon. You are of Themyscira, you are a warrior. Fight them!" Diana pled. She caught the fist, barely keeping the veins away from her skin.

"We will… assimilate…" Her body seized and those prehensile veins began to search aimlessly in the air for purchase. No… No, they were being pushed out. The metal tubes dropped to the biobed pad before she went completely rigid in her sister's arms. Diana could tell instantly what was happening. She had seen it so many times before in all manner of injuries.

"Jim!" She cried once she managed to get Vanessa's arms pinned. "We have to sedate her! She is going into shock!"

Jim was already several thoughts ahead of her. He had called for security - there were three red-shirted security guards with phaser rifles at the door - and he was beside Diana with another hypospray. He dosed the seizing woman as he motioned for his security team to stay back.

Diana gripped her tight, heart aching as the seizing eased, then turned from seizing to slack. She went to sleep in the oblivion for the moment. Diana did not let go, instead holding her sister as tenderly as she could, even after she no longer needed to restrain her. Finally, she met Jim's eyes and was caught by their mutual concern.

She released Vanessa and laid her back down on the biobed before moving to check on the nurse. "Doctor, how is he?" She received no response as McCoy tried one more hypospray combination, then pulled his medical tricorder.

"Bones." Kirk urged. "What did she do to him?"

"She injected him with those nanites. I don't know what she was trying to, but…" McCoy slowly lowered his tricorder, looking up at them both with heavy eyes. "He's dead, Jim."


	9. Argentum Cygnus: Act III

**Argentum Cygnus: Act III**

"She killed Alex, Jim! What am I supposed to tell his wife?"

"Bones, you're not gonna tell her anything, you're gonna breathe for five seconds and sit down."

"Don't you tell me to calm down, Jim!" Diana winced as Doctor McCoy's voice reached a raw growl. She certainly did not blame him. She had spent the last half-hour watching the security detail as they set up positions around Vanessa and erected a localized force field with small beacon-like devices. It reminded her of the similar fields that Bruce had utilized on the Watchtower satellite. Needless to say, she did not have the most confidence that it could prevent Vanessa from acting on the cold compulsion that had forced her to strike out.

 _Forced her to kill…_ Diana's heart sank, her mind haunted by the pale, suffering expression that had frozen on the nurse's face.

It did not shock her in the slightest that the tragedy meant the captain called his senior staff to the briefing room. Diana had followed quietly and if anyone took umbrage with it, they were wise enough to remain silent.

Vanessa was Themysciran. She was not a machine.

But, she had no way of knowing if the _Enterprise_ crew would see it the same.

Worse, she was growing more convinced by the moment that this was in fact Darkseid's legacy. She did not know how or why, but the God-King lived on. If not directly, then in these Borg who had assimilated – such a cold, surgical word – the mother box technology. If one victim of such horrors could be so easily corrupted, then there was only one solution: Vanessa had to be saved.

It reminded her of so many meetings between generals of Man's world she had witnessed in her life. With Steve, in London, hearing the callous dismissal of soldiers on the frontlines of their border disputes. In World War II, pleading with the joint chiefs of staff in the United States to involve themselves in the defense of the victims of Hitler's megalomania. Later, in 2032, begging the UN to take action against Lex Luthor's war crimes so that Bruce's death would not be in vain. They all ended the same.

"Doctor," Spock's voice cut in between the two men. "Given the fact that you have sedated her, is it reasonable to assume that if she awakens, she will be a danger to the crew once more?"

"Certain as the sun rises in the east. Whatever these Borg did to her, they scrambled her noggin. She's a machine for them to use. I don't even think she was trying to kill Alex. She was trying to, uh, assimilate them, make him one like her." The way McCoy eased the timbre of his voice suggested that he knew Vanessa was a victim. "But, whatever's runnin' through her veins don't work the way the Borg want it to. That's probably why they cut her loose anyway." She got the impression he disliked being helpless or without options. To combine such an emotion with grief was to invite anger. She had done it herself.

 _You stopped me from_ _ **killing Ares**_ _! It isn't just the Germans he corrupted, he's corrupted you, too. I will save all of you._

Diana inhaled sharply as the memory struck her with full force. It had been so long since she had thought of the massacre in Veld. She had locked those memories away with much of her others surrounding Steve. But, while she had thought of the happier times, bittersweet as they were… she had buried those moments. The moments when she had thrown her blame on Steve. She knew so little, then.

Her eyes darted to Jim at the head of the table. He was listening to his crew, eyes on the reflective surface of the polished black table. She could not know his mind, but she knew his expression. Where Steve's had been haunted, hollow… Jim was determined.

"If this woman is indeed a machine based on the cybernetic implantations," Spock had steepled his fingers together, speaking with the cold, calculated logic he relied on. If anyone had noticed Diana slipped into her memories – her mistakes – they had not said so. "Then, is it a reasonable assumption that you could deactivate her until we can return her to Starfleet for examination?"

"You mean kill her?" McCoy, to his credit, balked at the Vulcan at the same time as Diana. "Good god, man, are you nuts? You cold-blooded bastard, she's a victim, not a weapon!"

"You said yourself that the Borg can utilize her body however they wish. To minimize potential danger, deactivating the cybernetic implants – and by extension, her – may be our only option." Spock didn't seem pleased with the suggestion. Of course, as Diana understood it, it was very rare that Spock showed any sort of emotion, and he would not have betrayed his discipline now.

"Spock, what you're suggesting is - " Uhura began, reluctant to entertain the idea as well.

"It may be our only way to mitigate risk while she is sedated. If we allow her to awaken once more, we do not know how well our weapons and technology may work to stop her."

"I don't care if you think it's the only way, I'm sure as hell not doin' it." McCoy snapped. "First rule is Do No Harm!" He turned to the captain at his left. "Jim, tell him you're not seriously considering this – "

Kirk finally rose a hand up to silence his chief medical officer. Again, she had seen the subtle shift from friend to captain. It was the way his jaw set, the way his eyes lost their softness. It reminded her of Antiope. One always knew where they stood with her. Once the room had quieted again, he exhaled, gathering his thoughts. Finally, he asked, "Bones, can you take the implants out of her? Maybe that'll help us break through the conditioning."

McCoy shook his head. He had clearly considered this question himself. "I don't have the kind of technology or medical specialists needed for that. These are invasive. I could just as easily save her or accidentally kill her if I tried to remove one of those cranial tubes."

Diana scowled. From her place at the end of the table, unobtrusively in the background, she finally spoke up. "Vanessa. She has a name. The more you continue to speak about her as if she is a gendered machine, the easier it is for you to decide what to do with her as if she is a tool, not an individual." When the crew turned to look at her, she found herself staring right at the commander. "You cannot simply 'deactivate' her, Commander Spock. She is trapped in her own mind, and I heard her cry out for help."

Spock rose an eyebrow. "Telepathic connections are oftentimes jarring and can be misleading due to the emotional intensity – "

Diana sat up abruptly, cutting him off. "This was not an overly emotional connection! I saw what she saw, and I felt what she felt, and I know the wrath of the God-King better than any of you in this room. _Somehow,_ Darkseid has taken what is most precious from her just as he promised he would: her will to live! She is a _victim_ and I will not entertain any other discussion to the contrary!"

It took her a moment to realize that her statement had caused a moment of confusion among the senior staff. Sulu and Chekov both exchanged perplexed glances, and Scotty paused in the midst of his sip of water. Her gaze flicked to Uhura, her brow knit with worry, and then finally back to Kirk.

She could tell he wasn't confused, as they were. He was concerned. "You keep mentioning him, but you clearly know what he's capable of. Diana, who the hell is Darkseid?"

Diana pursed her lips. Her stomach dropped, cold and unsettled. She could not keep this to herself any longer. She had already waited too long. She could not protect them if she had already helped bring the danger aboard. She had to make sure they understood the gravity. Only then could they understand why she feared him. And Diana did not fear many. But she did fear the New God.

"In order to understand Darkseid, you must first understand who I am." She began, rising from the chair and unzipping her jacket. Her shirt still covered the armor, but as she rested the jacket on the back of her seat, they could see the silver bracelets in the harsh light, glinting as the holy relics they were. "I know that most of you think me the queen of a planet, of Themyscira. But, that is only partially true." She drew herself up. "I am Diana, Daughter of Hippolyta, she who was Queen of the Amazons in the time before history. I am the Daughter of Zeus, he who was King of the Gods when man was but a dream. In point of fact, I do not know my true age. But, by your calendars, I am well over 5000 years old."

Everyone in the room was silent, dumbfounded by the revelation – or at the least, skeptical but unable to form the right rebuttal.

"For most of those years, I thought myself an Amazon. I was raised upon an island in the Mediterranean. The Themyscira you have seen, Jim, is the result of our forced migration from Man's World. For many centuries, the island was hidden from man. But, eventually, in the time that society would later call World War I, I came to Man's World. I thought myself a guardian of the innocent and sworn to uphold the Amazon's sacred duty: to kill Ares."

It was Jim who finally spoke. And she knew the words he would say before they came from his mouth. "Ares… as in the god of war?" For a brief moment, she was struck with how cruel Fate had been. They had brought her to this place with such a familiar, beloved face. Beloved voice. But, she would be forced to tell all of this to a man who had never lived it. Again, she wondered if this was a trick. Yet, she could not force herself to quiet.

"Yes. And he was real. He had fought the gods out of envy of man. We thought the gods had perished in the conflict, and by the time I came to Man's world, he had been in the midst of preparing a state of perpetual war upon the Earth. His wrath was nearly complete. It took…" Her eyes flickered for just a moment to those eyes that belonged to Steve, yet were clearly those of another. "A great sacrifice to end the war and defeat Ares. In doing so, I learned of my true heritage."

"You're saying that… killing Ares ended World War I?" McCoy sounded as disbelieving as she truly expected.

"No. The war would have always ended. All I did was stop Ares from concocting greater schemes. I thought man could be easily corrupted, as if enthralled by the god. And in a way, they were. But, the Germans were already defeated. And… a good friend stopped the last German dissident from escalating the conflict. But, as I'm sure you know…." It took all that Diana had within her not to fade back into the twilight of memory. To the dark times of the 1940s. "It was not a true peace. It gave rise to a darkness within mankind that took another global conflict to stop. But, then, it continued on. In one form or another, Ares got his wish. And I retreated from the world of man. I became a civilian and tried to resurrect the gods."

Sulu spoke up, his voice nearly lost. "And did you?"

Diana looked down at her bracelets, tracing her fingers against the fine seams. "I did. But, the gods are cruel. The gods are fickle. And most of all, they do as they will. Not as we ask."

"Are you suggesting that you are some form of long-lived alien species?" Spock was ever the voice of logic and science.

Diana scoffed quietly. "No, Commander Spock. I am telling you that I am a goddess. I have not aged since I reached adulthood. And I have many gifts that you have not seen, nor do I think you will."

Uhura muttered something, an oath in her home tongue that made Diana's heart skip a beat.

"Mimi sistahili ibada yako." Diana breathed in return, resting her hand on the lieutenant's shoulder. "But, thank you for the prayer all the same."

Uhura's hand barely shook with emotion, but she clenched it and Diana watched the moment pass.

Again, she turned to the crew. She had to complete the narrative. They had to understand. If they didn't, then no one else would ever know her story. "In the time that was called the Golden Age of Heroes, the late 2010s, I met Kal-El, son of Krypton. I met Bruce Wayne, a billionaire who had turned his fortune to eradicating crime and violence in his city. It was through their insistence that I left my sabbatical. I returned to the world of heroes and I fought alongside them against a great enemy. The God-King of Apokalips, a planet far from the reaches of space that we had at the time. I do not know where this planet may be now, but I do know that it was a place of terror and mayhem. Darkseid was the only creature I ever encountered more craven and power-hungry than Ares.

"We defeated him, sent his parademon army back through the wormholes – boom tubes – they had created to reach Earth. I have always thought that we had slain him in our conflicts." Diana crossed her arms over her chest and made her way to the viewport, watching the stars flicker outside. "But, I fear I was wrong."

She was not surprised that the room had fallen silent. When she glanced back at them, Jim asked, "Because of what you saw on the sphere?"

Nodding, Diana let her arms drop to her sides, hands clenching into gentle fists. "Yes. And also because of what I… felt… in Vanessa's mind. Darkseid had one goal. He sought a cosmic formula called the anti-life equation. And I have never felt anything so close to what he described until I touched Vanessa's mind. It is possible that these Borg have accomplished what he could not."

McCoy slowly stood. "That's what spooked you so bad."

"Yes. And that is why we cannot simply deactivate her, or throw her in the brig. We must find a way to reverse the damage. It is the only way to prevent more suffering." Diana made her way over to the captain. "I will speak with her when she awakens again. Perhaps I can determine – "

Kirk's jaw had set once more. His eyes had gone cold. _Such as when he faced the Romulans._ A man pushed past his courtesy. "Senior staff dismissed. I need to talk to Ambassador Prince alone." His tone was casual, but she could tell there was a dark edge underneath it.

Immediately, a flash of defensive anger rippled through her as the rest of the crew filed out of the room. He was angry with her. He would find that she was not so easily commanded as his staff. Perhaps she'd misjudged him after all.

"What the hell is the matter with you?" Jim barked, practically jumping out of his seat the moment the doors closed behind Chekov. "I have spent the last three weeks vouching for you with Starfleet, with my crew, with every new planet that we've come across, and you've been holding that back since the moment we found the Borg sphere?" He stormed towards her, closing the distance between them and squaring off with her. "If we had known that, we never would have woken her up!"

"I warned you of the danger on the sphere and you encouraged that we take her back to your ship!" Diana snapped back. In an instant, her hands went to her hips as righteous anger began to bubble up within her chest. "I had no way of knowing what exactly had happened to her, but if you expect me to leave someone who is clearly a victim in the hands of her captors, than you are less than the man I thought you were and you claim to be!"

"I completely support you wanting to help her!" Jim's voice was laced with exasperation, but that dark edge still hadn't left. When he next spoke, his tone was more measured, as if he were thinking through his words carefully, "Look, I never pushed you about your past, but I would at least think you would have told me about something _this_ important!"

"My past is just that: _mine!_ I am not your subordinate, you cannot order me to tell you everything of my life before I met you, _Captain_!" She spat the title, wishing for a long moment that she had never come here at all. She had been wrong. All he cared about was what _he_ thought needed to be done. "What I do to defend these people is not up to you, and if you cannot trust me – "

"It's not about trust!" Jim shouted, seemingly at a loss. "It's not about _trust,_ it's about what I need to do my job! To help you do yours!" The argument somehow felt new and ancient at the same time. She felt the same tone, the swell of much the same argument all those years ago at Ludendorff's command center. But, she would not be swayed. Her faith in humanity was not shaken – just in Jim's understanding of how their relationship needed to work.

"What are you talking about? You never even cared if I told you any of this!"

"I've been asking you for weeks to tell me more about yourself, Diana." Jim had met her eyes, but she found that he couldn't seem to keep the connection. He turned away, rubbing his mouth as he tried to think of – presumably – his next move. "You say you want to protect humanity, to help us, but then you go and you shoot us in the foot!"

"Darkseid is not the Romulans. He does not care for territory, only death, and I was more preoccupied with keeping you out of danger, not satisfying your need to control the situation!"

Jim finally shouted. "You're damn right it's about control!" Immediately, she could see that he regretted the words. If nothing else, the look of genuine disgust on her face probably had something to do with it. So, instead, he turned back to her and tried again, more earnest. "Don't you get it? I have an entire crew complement to worry about! Four hundred and thirty people! Men and women! They have families, they have children back in the Federation! And I know all their names, their faces! Hell, I know most of their hobbies! Diana, they are my responsibility, and you put all of them at risk by not being explicitly clear with me from the _beginning_! Not a day and a death later but the moment you have your first inkling of what's happening." Jim's hands went up as if he wanted to grab her, but instead they clenched into desperate fists as he tried to explain. "This could have gotten them all killed! And I'd be the one writing the letters to their families, so the _least_ you could do is believe me when I say that if you know of something as devastatingly dangerous as an anti-life equation, then for the love of God, _tell me so I can help!_ "

Diana's anger stuttered, then failed her all together. "You… you wouldn't have tried to stop us from bringing her on board?" She felt shame color her cheeks in place of her anger. She had been so used to being the monarch, holding information to her chest that no one else need know… she was always trying not to burden others with the sorrows she had witnessed.

Jim shook his head, honest disbelief plain on his face. " _No._ Of course not." His mouth moved wordlessly for a moment as he tried to formulate a satisfactory response to convey what he wanted. "You think I'd let Spock convince anyone to deactivate her, either? You said it yourself, Diana. She's not a weapon, she's not a machine. I wanted to bring her onboard. Hell, I would have carried her onboard myself if you hadn't. But…" He held his breath, biting back some retort or another before finally managing. "I said it and I meant it. I see you as a friend. I trust that what you want for humanity is in their best interests. You're _Wonder Woman_. The few records we have of you are _incredibly_ flattering. But, if you can't extend the same trust to me, then I can't help you and I can't help my crew. And that's not how this can work." He shook his head and paced the circumference of the table before bracing his hands on the back of one of the chairs. "I'm on your side. But, if I'd known what you just told me, Alex Yetron might still be alive. I sure as hell wouldn't have let her have free run of Sickbay. We would have supervised her. I would have had Bones see what implants he _could_ remove under sedation." Jim sighed, the anger spent. In place of it was frustration and disappointment. Disappointment that she had not extended the open hand he had given to her. "Just… I meant what I said: I wanted to be your friend. What possible benefit do you get from not being honest with me?"

Diana opened her mouth to reply, then clamped it shut. It was such an odd way to ask the question. He didn't ask if she didn't trust him. He didn't ask if she respected him. He was asking what perceived benefit she had seen in her course of action. He was trying to see her point of view.

Perhaps Jim Kirk was not such a mystery. Perhaps he could be defined.

He was an open, honest man. Both as Captain Kirk… and as Jim.

"I…" Diana found herself searching for words. She was always so careful with them, but she couldn't seem to find the right ones. "I am… sorry." She finally settled with. It seemed so hollow, such a bare minimum of how she felt. "I was… I have been so accustomed to knowing Kal has been by my side, and as queen…. I did not wish to visit my burdens upon others." Her dark eyes finally drifted from her bracelets – she had been playing with the buckles – back up to Jim.

And damn the gods, he was _smiling._

"Okay, well…" He had somehow found amusement in all of this. Pushing off of the chair, Jim strode back over to her and reached out, resting his hand on her shoulder. "For the record, you've made it very clear you're not a queen anymore. You're an ambassador and my friend. And friends share burdens. It's what we do. If you want to do that over a drink, I will always make time for you." His hand squeezed gently, and she realized his eyes were not on her face, but perhaps her neck or collar. "But, please don't hold back anymore. There's so much you know that we don't. And I can't help if I don't know what's coming."

In a moment, feeling his eyes on her had sent her heart racing. It had been a very long time since someone had been so close to her and open with her. Even the Amazons held her at arm's length now. But, he didn't.

The two of them didn't speak. They had said all they planned to and had come out on the other side buoyed. They had both been right, but… he had made the stronger point. She could not keep all of her past to herself, not if it could endanger the people he cared about. And he cared so deeply, so openly for his crew. He had stood his ground against her, not for his ego, but for the safety and welfare of his extended family.

Barry had one told her she had the biggest heart of anyone he had ever met.

She felt like perhaps she had found her match to rival.

The lights suddenly flickered around them, then went out entirely for a moment. When they came back up, both of them were alert and on guard.

"What the hell was that?" Jim muttered, already on his way to the bridge.

"I'm afraid we may already know…" Diana replied, following him.

* * *

"Why is my ship losing power, Mister Spock?" Jim demanded as he made it to the bridge, heading for his chair.

As the ship suddenly lost lights once more, it pitched heavily starboard and Diana had to grab hold of a railing – without denting it – to steady herself. Her eyes focused on the viewscreen ahead. If the Borg had come, if the Romulans had come, the ship could have been caught off-guard. But, the screen was still frozen on the floating sphere in space. There seemed to be no external threat.

"We are experiencing localized power failures all of the ship, primarily to weapons, shields and life support." Spock vacated the captain's chair and immediately moved to his science station. "Unauthorized access to primary systems seem to be coming from the sickbay."

"Red Alert!" Jim turned his attention to Diana. They both knew who was responsible. It hardly needed to be said.

Doctor McCoy's voice came through the comm system, clear as a bell. " _McCoy to the bridge! My patient just walked through my damn force field and went on a tear through sickbay!_ "

Jim's expression went a bit stony as he heard his best friend's voice. "Bones, are you alright?"

" _Just shaken. I don't think she even noticed me, Jim. She just woke up, spent twenty seconds staring at the force field, then walked through it._ "

Jim furrowed his brow. "How is that even possible?"

" _I'm a Doctor, Jim, not an engineer, how the hell should I know? All I know is the moment your security detail fired on her, she knocked one of them into a wall until the other two stopped firing. Then, she just kept walking. I don't think she saw them as a threat._ "

"Why wouldn't she attack the others like she did Alex?" He asked.

" _She wasn't talking about assimilating people. She kept repeating 'Home' over and over. Maybe she doesn't see a threat when she's following an objective_."

"But, she doesn't know what her home is." Jim shook his head. "Doesn't make any sense. We saw her attack Alex."

Diana's eyebrows rose in recollection. Of course. She knew what had set her off the first time. She had been so focused on what the Borg had done to her, she had not considered what Vanessa would have heard, or how it had impacted her. "Jim." She caught his eye. "She attacked when I mentioned taking her home. The Borg must have programmed her to see their hivemind as home. When I spoke of home to her, it must have activated some sort of… of…" She struggled to find the words. "Protocol to recall her."

Jim's eyes widened. "You might be right." He glanced over at his science officer. "Spock?"

Spock took a seat at his station, carefully studying the readout. "I believe our prisoner is attempting to access the communications array. Ambassador Prince may be correct in that she will reach out to other Borg." He began to rapidly flip switches and tap keys. "I am attempting to lock her out of our main deflector control." Spock flipped a toggle on the upper console. After a moment, it was clear that he had opened a comm signal. "Mister Scott, please assist me by locking the main computer core with the Engineering command codes. The Borg prisoner in sickbay must be stopped from reaching the collective Borg communications array."

Scotty's voice crackled over the comm. _"Aye, Mister Spock, I'm on it!"_ The signal was not as crisp as she had heard in the past. Vanessa was working quickly. Possibly too quickly for the crew.

The ship's gravity buckled and Diana felt the most unpleasant sensation of her stomach acting as though it was back in space. Life support included artificial gravity.

" _Now_ , Mister Scott!" Jim shouted over comms, his hands white-knuckled as he clutched the armrests.

" _I'm trying, captain, but she's moving too quickly for the command codes to take effect. I get one logged and she overrides it. At this rate…_ " Scotty's voice degraded further, adding an unpleasant shiver down her spine. " _We're practically givin' her the ship._ "

With critical systems of the ship in danger, she knew that Jim would need to order security. But, how many of the crew on the security detail had already been injured?

"I will subdue her." Diana said, loud enough for everyone on the bridge to hear her. "She will listen to me. And if she will not, I will need Doctor McCoy to provide a stronger sedative."

The look on Jim's face told her that they were truly in sync now. The sins were forgiven, but not forgotten. They would both learn from them. "Do it. And Scotty, I want you in sickbay the moment this is over. You and Bones need to figure out what implants can be removed as quickly as possible. Every second she's under sedation and cybernetic is another second that she can wake up and try this stunt again."

" _Aye, sir._ "

" _You got it, Jim._ "

Knowing that she had the chief engineer and chief medical officer behind the effort to help her, Diana took the help gladly. Nodding, she headed for the turbo lift and grabbed her shirt. By the time the lift doors closed, she had pulled her shirt off and dropped the pants.

When the turbolift reached Deck 5, Ambassador Diana Prince did not emerge.

Wonder Woman did.


	10. Argentum Cygnus: Act IV

**Argentum Cygnus: Act IV**

Diana inhaled deeply as she strode down the corridor to sickbay. Her armor and bracelets hugged her like a second skin, supporting her and urging her forward. The diadem that had once belonged to Antiope glinted in the ship's lighting as she crossed the length of the ship to reach the center of the great beast.

More than one crewmember gaped as she passed, dark curls framing her face and somehow making her fierce battle readiness all the more comforting to them.

The circumstances were dire. If Vanessa reached out to the Borg, it would become nearly impossible to keep her out of their clutches.

But, Diana was made of the impossible. And she would fight gods and monsters to save her sister. Even from herself.

Upon reaching the sickbay doors, Diana found that the doors wouldn't open. She flipped the door control, but heard an unpleasant beep as it refused to allow her entry. She considered reaching out to the captain, but knocked on the door instead. If Doctor McCoy's words had been true, then it was entirely possible he had been left alone, but that Vanessa was locking anyone out that could stop her.

"Door's locked! The moment she got access to the console, she locked us in and locked you out, Diana." The doctor's voice was muffled and irritated, but otherwise sounded fine. "Sorry, sweetheart, but you're not gettin' in that way."

Diana ran her hands along the door, looking for a seam. When her fingers brushed the line and caught the barest hint of an edge, Diana smiled. She took a step back, grabbing her sword off of her back. "Don't worry, Doctor. I'll be there in just a moment. "

"What the hell are you - "

Metal struck metal with a harsh clang as Diana dug the tip of her sword into the door seam with Amazonian precision and skill. She drove in further, planting her feet and using the sword as leverage to get herself an inch of space between the doors. Once she had a gap, she replaced her sword with her fingers. The vice grip that had crushed pipes and countless metal edges held fast, forcing the door to stay open just that much while it desperately tried to force the hydraulics back in place.

The sword clattered to the ground, startling McCoy within. It didn't seem to call any attention to Vanessa, though. As Diana braced herself for what came next, she spotted Vanessa in the back of the sickbay. Her hand, the one that had not expelled the metal veins, had a matching pair directly interfaced into the computer console. She was so focused on executing the programming of that hive mind, she most likely would not assess Diana a threat until she truly entered the room.

Diana began to pull the doors apart, then moved to pushing them further away. She groaned with the effort, fighting the technological power of the _Enterprise_ as she forced the metal back. If it would not adhere to her commands, she would bend it to her will.

Sparks erupted from the corners of the doors as systems failed, but she continued to press on until finally, the doors remained forced open. Once she felt them give, she crouched down to pick up her discarded weapon, twirling it in her hand as she marched forward.

Doctor McCoy and a handful of his medical staff were sequestered near his office. The pattern enhancers that had once sustained a force field to stop Vanessa from leaving were shorted out on the other side of the room. "Has she attempted to harm you?" She asked as she sheathed her weapon. If she could avoid bloodshed, she would certainly do so.

"No. Like I said, she's ignoring us. Probably on account of the fact that we didn't try to stop her. She walked through that thing and just started shutting us out of systems. The security team didn't make it." McCoy was clearly addressing her, but his eyes were on the broken sickbay doors. "I guess there's a lot we don't know about you…" When he finally managed to look at her, his gaze was focused on the eagle on her chest. Polished and glinting in the harsh light of sickbay, she could tell he was momentarily in awe. "History doesn't do you justice, darlin'."

Diana rested her hand on his shoulder to fully have his attention. "I promise you, Doctor, if there is anything you wish to know of me, we can speak of it later. But for now, I suggest you stay back." A console beeped behind them and the lights flickered once more. Arching an eyebrow, Diana turned to face her sister once more. "This could get messy…"

 **WARNING. PRIMARY SYSTEMS COMPROMISED.**

The deck shuddered and rolled again. If she was going to save the crew, she had to act quickly.

"Unit attempting to access communications array…" Vanessa intoned, oblivious to the others around her.

Diana made her way over to her fellow Amazon. "Vanessa, listen to me. It's Diana. You can stop this. You do not have to return to them. The Borg do not seek to help you. They only wish to strip you of your identity."

Vanessa continued on, undeterred. It was impossible to tell if she had even heard the words. "Communications access has been locked by command codes… attempting to override. This technology will be assimilated…" The woman tilted her head, exposing her skull to Diana. In the time since they had sedated her before, the implants had continued to be rejected. The cranial tubes looked even worse. If she could subdue her, then they could help her. She wanted to fight the Borg. She only needed the tools.

"Vanessa, I beg of you, sister, hear me. We will save you. I don't wish to fight you, but if I must, I will stop you from hurting anyone else."

"Life support access granted - " Diana heard the red alert klaxons sound again as the life support of the ship was compromised. Her heart wished that she could have stopped this before she threatened the crew once more, but the time for talk was momentarily over. Until they could break through the conditioning, she could not be reasoned with.

"I am sorry, Vanessa." She breathed, ashamed that she had not given Jim the tools to help her before now. Her hand reached out, gripping Vanessa's cybernetic wrist tightly. "But, you will _**stop**_ _._ **"**

Diana pulled the implants free of the console to an eruption of sparks.

As the ship rattled from the abuse, Diana had no time to think about whether or not the bridge could get command back. She was more concerned with the way Vanessa's other arm had swung around to strike out at her attacker. With a strangled grunt, Diana was thrown back as the Amazon's punch hit her square in the solar plexus.

Diana slammed into the sickbay wall, feeling the bulkhead dent and give for her shape. Vanessa was stronger than the typical Amazon. It felt like fighting Kal in his prime. The Borg had enhanced her somehow.

Diana shoved off of the wall and clenched her hands into fists, smirking. It would be a real fight.

She had expected that the Borg would have taken all of Vanessa's Themysciran training from her, that she would only know how to fight in the staccato movements of brute force that she had used in killing Nurse Yetron. Instead, she found herself blocking blows that she had been taught from Menalippe, Artemis, and even Antiope herself.

Diana's feet moved in the old ways, and her arms followed as she braced herself and took each blow as steady as a tree. She was immutable as Mt. Etna, forcing her to exhaust her brute strength over and over again while Diana could gain an understanding of how Vanessa was fighting.

There was no discipline. It was rote memorization, calculated in its playback. Diana could see each form as it came to fruition. She knew the counter to the dance, and waited until Vanessa had exhausted many of those combinations before she finally took action.

From McCoy's perspective, she probably looked to be taking a beating. With her hands up to defend, never striking, never lashing out as she gauged all of the intelligence she needed in a minute.

"You will be assimilated." Vanessa's voice had so much more warmth and life left in it. This was not Vanessa.

Diana finally made her move. As the Borg moved to strike overhead, Diana caught her wrist and pivoted.

Vanessa hit the bulkhead with another crunch. The metallic implants around her hand sparked and ceased in their constant idle movement. Diana had disabled them. She had also disabled others: the spiderweb implants that had burned off in the heat of her lasso. _Perhaps I can disable more… As long as I'm prepared for the mental toll..._

Diana braced herself for another attack as she was assaulted with another calculated series of maneuvers. Her bracelets clashed against the metal of the cybernetic augmentation, but she never ceased. She pivoted and kicked low, sweeping her off her feet.

She landed hard. The Borg technology did not seem to allow for great lower flexibility.

"Unit is damaged." Vanessa's voice sounded more harsh than before. Sitting up abruptly, she rose the metallic arm once more and pointed it at Diana. She expected the metal veins as before.

Instead, she barely had time to get her hands up to take a disruptor bolt unlike she had seen from the Romulans or Federation weapons. The resulting flash left spots in her eyes and suddenly, Diana wasn't sure what she was seeing. She backpedaled, blinking rapidly to try to clear the obstruction.

"Additional data access point identified." The bolt fired again, this time at Diana's feet. She was thrown back, skidding against the ground on her back until she finally managed to grab hold of a console. Lifting herself up, the flash-blindness spots had disappeared before her eyes. But, so had Vanessa.

Instead, a raw and smoldering hole now occupied the space where Diana had once stood. From the expression on McCoy's face, it was easy to assume what had happened. She'd jumped from one deck to the other.

Scrambling to her feet, Diana pulled her shield and ran for the hole. "Doctor, tell the captain that she is on the move! Make sure the area is evacuated!"

Diana pulled her knees up to her chest as she leapt, using the shield to avoid drifting ash and molten flecks of metal before she finally landed with a thud. She felt bulkhead shudder in response. With a quick glance over the lip of her shield, she caught sight of several cargo containers. They had dropped into a cargo bay. From the length of the fall, she assumed it had been two decks below. Most likely, Vanessa had found the schematics of the ship while raiding the computer. That was unfortunate; Diana did not have the benefit of that knowledge.

Another disruptor bolt flashed out of the corner of her eye, and Diana rolled out of the way. On instinct, she watched the shadows on the wall and hurled her shield with a grunt. It ricocheted off of a cargo container before knocking Vanessa in the back. It bought her just enough time to whip around another stack of containers and out of sight, using her god-like speed and agility to her advantage. The shield slid to a halt, spinning like a top until she could reach it. She leapt up and over a row of containers just as a quick volley of disruptor bolts scorched the wall behind her and a step behind.

It had been too long since she had pushed herself to move so quickly. As Kal had slowed down, so had she. She lamented her complacency. It wouldn't help her now. He had told her to push harder, and she had listened. But, she had tempered herself for two hundred years for the sake of her Amazons. To be the queen.

She should have recalled how her mother fought as fiercely as them all.

For such an old god by Man's World, Diana had forgotten how young she truly felt. And how naive she could still be.

Scrambling for cover, she stilled her feet on the cold bulkhead. Her boots were not as silent as she wished them to be, and now, she needed to think ahead of Vanessa's next move.

" _Bridge to Cargo Bay 1!_ " Jim's voice echoed through the cavernous room and its maze of storage containers. _"Diana, if you can hear me, we're reading inner hull breaches on three decks. If you can't get her under control, the computer's going to start sealing and opening the bay to vacuum. The ship can't take much more abuse until Scotty can get back into the main computer._ "

For an idle moment, she reached for what she expected to be her communicator. She took the realization that it must have been in her jacket in stride, but it meant her options had grown more limited. She could not afford to tire her opponent. She needed to de-escalate the conflict, and now there was the more pressing danger to the ship urging her forward.

" _Diana!"_ Jim received no response as she could not give one. Something told her, he would not take that well.

Clutching her shield tightly, Diana's other hand reached for her lasso.

Vanessa's footsteps were coming down another row of containers, presumably on her way to the main computer console. Her implants were sparking and whirring as they attempted - and failed - to resume their normal functionality.

Diana closed her eyes and reached out with her senses. Time slowed to a crawl as she considered how each footstep echoed, how close it was, how even or impaired the gait was…

She stepped out of her point of cover and hurled her shield again. She targeted her center of gravity, forcing her mechanically-impaired body to stumble and crash into more of the containers.

In the blink of an eye, Diana unfurled the Lasso of Hestia and roped it around Vanessa's shoulders, pinning her arms to her sides. The sacred relic shone, brilliant and pure. Its radiance had been one of few gifts to prove to Diana that some of the gods had truly loved this world they had orchestrated. And Hestia, whether she was myth, long-dead, or somewhere beyond her reach, would help her now.

Her sister tried to tug away from the lasso. It only gripped her tighter. The metal implants on her arms turned to molten droplets, dripping down her skin and onto the ground below. Yet, she never cried out. She stopped speaking altogether. Her eyes seemed trained on Diana, but the expression was completely… dead.

No. This could _not_ be.

"The Lasso of Hestia compels you to know the truth within yourself, sister. You are not these Borg." Diana said, tightening her grip on the lasso.

The doors to the cargo bay opened and Kirk sprinted in, phaser trained on the woman that had threatened his ship.

"No, Jim!" Diana held her hand up to stop him, looping the lasso around her other hand one more time. She never took her gaze off of her sister, the way her body was slowly becoming more human, less machine. "Please. I can save her."

Out of the corner of her eye, she watched him lower the phaser in his hand.

She had nearly lost Vanessa in her wish to protect Jim from the truth. She would do so no longer. She believed in truth, in all of its glory and horror. She had only needed to be reminded of that.

Diana reached out with her mind as Vanessa's body began to buckle from the heat of the lasso. "You are Vanessa of house Katalepis. You are an Amazon of Themyscira. You were first among the daughters of Euboea, she who lost her life in the first battle against Man's World in the War to End All Wars. You were a scholar, a seeker of truth in the laws that governed the stars, the earth and the sea." She recalled their meetings when she was a child, the few times they had interacted on the island. "You are my sister. You are not a machine. You left Themyscira to show Man's World the best of us. You took refugees into your home. You encouraged us to greet men with open arms when you could have held your mother's death against them." She had spent so little time with her sister, but Diana could remember them now as plain as day. The lasso had revealed to both of them the truth. And Diana loved her sister's open heart.

Her diadem began to gleam a brilliant white, and the lasso in turn began to shift from a dark golden hue to a lighter one. Across the room from her, Diana could see Vanessa's face slowly shift to awareness. She smiled as Vanessa blinked. "Sister, I shall take you home. I promise."

"Diana..." Vanessa breathed, blinking quickly as her body buckled under her. "Please… help me... "

The voice grew more insistent. Diana could send the outreach through the lasso and closed her eyes.

The two of them stood at Themyscira's shores. Not the red star-tinted ones, but the brilliant blues of Earth.

This was the landscape of Vanessa's mind. In seeing Diana, she had called them back to this place and this time. The woman who stood before her was not the machine, but the woman that she had seen upon leaving for the NASA program.

" _Diana…_ " The voice was tinged with youth. Even though Vanessa had been so much older than Diana, she seemed to have lost many of those years in the abuse from the Borg. _"You found me."_

" _If I had known, I would have come sooner."_ Diana breathed. She meant every word, and even now, wished she had never left Man's World.

" _I just want to go home."_ Vanessa smiled, her dark hair playing in the wind that she had conjured. _"I thought that space was all I ever wanted to see. But, it is as dark as the night. And they have so many secrets… I can still hear them calling…_ "

" _The voices will fade."_ Diana stepped closer. _"But, you must let us help you. You must fight, like the Amazon I know you to be. And know this… I love you, sister. And I will see that you reach the shores of Themyscira."_

" _I love you as well… And I trust you, my Princess._ "

Diana felt the lasso in her hand go slack, and she opened her eyes to the physical world. To the _Enterprise_ , to the cargo bay and the sterile bulkheads. It took her a half a moment to recognize that Vanessa was falling.

With enough speed to rattle the containers, she reached her sister and caught her. The two of them went down to the floor together, and she cradled her in her arms. Gently, she took Vanessa's prone figure into her lap. Finally, her sister seemed to be at peace. Whether it had been in the melee or the ensuing telepathic connection…

The cranial tubes had finally been rejected by her body.

Footsteps approached her, and Diana looked up as Jim Kirk holstered his phaser. He crouched down, resting his elbows on his knees as he, too, took in the situation. "I don't get it. The two of you stood there, the implants just started melting off, and then you just went silent. And you were… glowing. How did you do this?"

Diana looked up at him, relief glistening in her eyes as she smiled. "I love, Jim. And that is enough."

* * *

"This looks like a damn good plan, son." McCoy patted Chief Engineer Scott on the back as the two of them poured over one of the computer consoles in sickbay. "We might actually be able to get these damn things off this poor girl before we even have to report back."

Diana smiled as the two men discussed Vanessa's condition. Half of Sickbay was cordoned off with a force field, but Vanessa had been successfully sedated. The duo had spent the better half of the hour going through the events of the fight with Diana and the captain, then set their minds to how they would remove the cybernetic implants. The ones that remained, at any rate.

"The trick's gonna be makin' sure we don't trip any failsafes, and I'm sure there are many." Scotty remarked, smiling up at Diana for a second before going back to his work. It was clear that they would remain in such deep conversation for the rest of the day, if not beginning their delicate work at the same time.

She would be asked to leave at any moment, and for that, she was grateful. While she felt the urge to be at her side during the surgery, she knew enough about medicine to know she would be in the way.

Instead, she quietly dismissed herself and made her way to the first console she passed in the corridor. It took very little time to find that Captain Kirk was in the same observation lounge they had shared drinks in before.

Very well. It seemed all roads led there. It had been her first opportunity to be honest that she had not taken. She would not pass up the next.

When she reached the lounge, he had a glass in hand and was staring out the viewport at the phenomenon that had been explained to her as _warp distortion_. They were both stars, and yet were not. The _Enterprise_ folded space around them and the visual effect was… intriguing, to say the least.

He turned to face her, presumably to see who had disturbed his time alone. For for the first time, she found another difference between Captain James Kirk and Captain Steve Trevor. If it had been Steve, he would have been thinking of the next point in the mission. And if there was not a mission, he would have been worrying about how to get to that next mission.

Jim had none of that weight. He had another smile and immediately leaned forward to grab another glass and started to pour. "Ambassador, please come in. I just cracked open this bottle, I'd be happy to have some company."

Diana rose an eyebrow, amused in spite of herself. "Am I Ambassador again? Are you on duty? Because…" She pointed to the drink in his hand.

Jim laughed and shrugged. "Habit. I assumed you were here on official business regarding your wayward citizen who has now found herself in Federation custody."

She smiled, although there was less joy in it than he had probably hoped to see. She slid into the stool beside him and took the offered glass of liquor, setting it in front of her. Staring into the amber liquid as it swirled around, Diana found herself thinking of the last time they had sat here. Their positions had been swapped, but the experience had been unique for her. To speak with someone that was so much like what she knew to be mankind while simultaneously new and unknown….

Diana frowned. She had jeopardized this newfound friendship by assuming she was still Queen and that her word was law. She had never enjoyed that authority, nor did she wish it now. "Yes, but… also, no." She finally tore her eyes away from the glass to face Jim. "You asked me to be honest, to share my burdens with you."

Jim nodded, his expression a little more serious. "I did. And I meant it. What's on your mind?"

She took a deep breath and leaned against the bar as she took a sip and set her tumbler back down. "When I told you of Vanessa, I thought I hardly remembered her. But, the truth is… the lasso doesn't just force someone to tell me the truth. It also forces me to face truths that otherwise I would not."

Jim swirled his glass as he considered her words. "And you had to face some of those when you were… in that telepathic connection."

Nodding, she continued. "I have not told you of how Themyscira came to be a home to refugees, both men and women. As you might have guessed, my island was a land of only women until we were forced to confront Man's World. While I left, my sisters stayed behind. Vanessa and I knew each other in passing circles, but I knew her mother very well. She trained me."

She didn't know how he had time to commit the name to memory, but nevertheless he muttered, "Euboea."

"Yes. Vanessa studied the stars, I studied battle. I read voraciously, but I'll admit mathematical formulas were not my greatest enthusiasm." As she spoke, Diana could recall times that the lasso had revealed to her; Vanessa had been there in passing. "When I returned from Man's World in the 2010s, I begged my mother to help us fight Darkseid. After the battle, we lost many on both Themyscira and in Man's World, many countries were quite devastated." She could recall the heated argument in the Senate chambers, how she pled with her mother to accept outsiders or fear that their culture would disappear entirely. "I asked my mother to take in victims, to open our arms to Man's World and make good on the dreams she had for my sisters. But, the Senate would not let them hold positions. For them, it was important to lead men above them until they could prove they would not throw us into slavery again."

She held up the bracelet in front of him, then rested her arm on the bar between them. Diana didn't pull away when his fingers reached out to trace the unique pattern on the edges. He was reverent, yet she could tell he was taking in all she told him. His curiosity of all life was now solely focused on her again. This time, she had no one else she could deflect attention to. "The warrior Heracles sold us to men. As such, we wore these gauntlets in that time - the other Amazons, not me. But, once my mother and aunt freed their sisters, it became a symbol that we had broken those chains and reclaimed these… bracelets of submission."

"So, to take them in would have been seen as a big risk." Jim's eyes lingered on the golden crest on her bracelets before his fingers finally stopped their caress. When he looked back up at her, she nearly forgot what she was talking about. He kept speaking, though, and in that moment, she had time to clear her mind. "They had had a way of life, justifiably worried about what men would do if they suddenly were in a position where they were not in charge. It's hard to look past that kind of innate fear, especially when it's justified to some extent. "

She slowly pulled her hand away. She was sure she would find herself thinking about the way his fingers achingly passed over the tip of the crest, as if he could imprint it into his memory. "There were many who wished for my mother to order me to silence. They understood what I wanted, but they simply could not justify the risk. In fact…" Diana cleared her throat and sat up a bit more. "Menalippe was among them. I know that you met her briefly."

Jim chuckled. "Yeah, she didn't seem to happy to see me."

She smiled a bit in return. "She eventually came around to see my side. But, it was not my words. It was Vanessa's. When I returned to help with cleanup efforts in Gotham and Metropolis, she made the case for us to change our ways. She had studied the stars all her life, and I had told her of Watchtower space station, of the United Nations space program. She wanted to see how mankind had excelled past the Amazons in this discipline. She wanted to be a part of the stars. And she did not want her mother's death to be the reason so many Amazons simply denied us on principle." Diana sighed, then motioned to the room around them. "All of this? Vanessa wanted that for all of us. It was because of her that we took men into Themyscira, that I fought to ensure they could have a place in the Senate. My mother insisted they take the sacred vows of the Amazons, and Vanessa, in turn, asked that I see her leave aboard the Argentum Cygnus. Without her, so much would be different." That smile she'd had for the past faded as she considered the reality of the situation. "She deserves to see what good came from her words and deeds, Jim."

Those blue eyes seemed to twinkle with amusement, crow's feet teasing her as a grin spread across his features. He nodded. "I completely agree. Which is why I asked Starfleet if we can complete her rehabilitation here and provide her quarters near yours."

Her jaw went slack. "Wait… you did? When did you have time for that?" Disbelief colored every word of that statement, but it was all she could do to keep her seat on the stool.

Jim laughed and drained his glass before continuing. "I sent in my report while you were working with Bones and Scotty to get her settled. I explained that since you can't go back to Themyscira yet, then we can't send Vanessa back yet, either. But, seeing as how you're not part of the Federation, we should be treating her like a refugee and as such, you are the only person in the whole galaxy she knows right now. That's the only way to ensure she'll recover. Seems stupid not to let you be there for your sister - "

Diana had hugged many people in her lifetime, but none that recently. And more importantly, she hadn't hugged anyone who looked and felt so much like Steve. And especially not when, in that moment, she wasn't thinking about Steve at all. She was utterly, completely and unabashedly grateful to Jim Kirk for what he had said.

Jim laughed and nearly toppled off the stool, but caught himself with one hand on the bar and the other hand on her back. " _Woah!_ Hey, oh… okay…"

Before she could consider what she had done too much, she pulled back and clapped her hands on his shoulders. "Thank you, Jim! I would never have asked that of you, but thank you. It will mean so much to her."

Jim looked as though he'd never been thanked for anything in his life with that grin. "I figured you wouldn't have asked. That's why I did."

Diana's hands shifted to his arms, and at some point, that hand around her back had shifted lower, but not too far. It was enough that the two of them were companionable, but bordering on almost _too_ companionable. For a moment, she considered pulling away. She couldn't trust that what she was feeling wasn't simply a reminder of Steve dancing with her, or the way he'd draped his coat over her shoulders in the cold. He made no effort to move closer or further, either. The two of them were trapped in limbo, it seemed.

" _Bridge to Captain Kirk. We've received a message from the Starfleet Command, priority one._ "

Lieutenant Uhura had inadvertently made the decision for them instead. As if nothing had happened, the two of them both slipped off of the stools and stepped away.

Jim cleared his throat, his hand against the back of his neck for some reason. "Put it through, Uhura. Thanks."

" _Captain Kirk. This is Admiral Hackett. We've received your report regarding the lifeform you found and the associated sphere. You are hereby ordered to bring the lifeform to the U.S.S. Yorktown. She will immediately be surrendered to Starfleet Intelligence and Starfleet Medical for a full examination and treatment protocol._ " Diana's heart sank, then swelled again with newfound, hot anger. Jim seemed to be feeling much the same, as he immediately stood straight, eyes sharp.

"With all due respect, Admiral, we have the medical staff on hand to perform the necessary procedures, and we have no idea what kind of tracking devices might be on her. If the Borg, uh, collective hivemind come for her, we'd be leading them back to a highly populated Federation starbase."

" _Let us worry about that, Captain. I just need you to follow the orders given to you by the Admiralty Board. Understood?_ "

Jim swore under his breath, then shook his head. "No, sir, I do not. I do _not_ advise that we attempt any sort of medical operation anywhere near a Federation station or sector. That tech is world's - _centuries_ \- more advanced than we have - "

" _Your objection is duly noted, Captain. You have your orders. Hackett out._ "

In just the span of a few words, the room had filled with mutual anger and frustration. Jim growled, then knocked the tumbler he'd had across the room. It shattered with an almost anti-climatic little crash.

Diana made a move towards the pacing man. "They cannot take her, Jim. They _cannot_ \- "

"I know, Diana. And like hell am I just gonna let them take her without a damn good explanation." Jim's voice had grown dark. He had slipped from friend to captain again.

"I have to make the case that she belongs in my custody. Let me speak with them." Diana could feel her tenuous grip on the situation was being ripped from her, and that scared her almost as much as the idea of any culture gaining access to Vanessa's implants. The Apokoliptian technology, the cybernetic components… any of it could devastate a civilization in the wrong hands.

Jim had gone silent, staring out the viewport. His shoulders had gone tense, but by the time he turned to face her again, he had clearly gone through some sort of mental process. He had a plan.

"You're gonna get your meeting."


	11. In the Shadow of Ares: Teaser

**In the Shadow of Ares: Teaser**

 _Personal Logs, Captain James T. Kirk. Stardate: 2264.34_

 _The last time I had been in orbit around the U.S.S. Yorktown, I was elated to be aboard my brand new ship. The_ _ **Enterprise-A**_ _had just been cleared for our mission, and I was ready to set course towards the nebula and beyond. I had no idea what we'd find, and frankly, I didn't care. I knew it would be exciting and worth whatever risk that needed to be taken. As long as we found new civilizations or some scientific phenomenon, I knew it would be worth it._

 _I just didn't expect what we found when we got out here._

 _I found a superhero from Earth's past - two, actually - hiding on a planet that no one could see. That would be interesting enough, but… now we've managed to find another Themysciran. And that girl went through the ringer. And I have the unlucky job of having to deliver her to Starfleet Intelligence._

 _But, that's not what she needs. She needs caring doctors, familiar faces, and time to re-adjust to what it means to be human. She's not gonna get that at Starfleet Intelligence. Even if I believe for one second that Admiral Marcus's co-conspirators aren't still spread around the intelligence community, I can't believe that Vanessa Katalepis will be better off without her spiritual, if not literal, sister around._

 _I promised Diana I'd get her a meeting with the Admiralty board. And I meant it. I sent a communique ahead to Commodore Paris, and she's assured me that she'll get some sort of an audience for her. Of course, that still means we'll be expected to comply with the order until told otherwise, and I just don't see Diana agreeing to turn her over until she has to. Or until I have exhausted every channel for escalation I have._

 _I used to think the rules didn't apply to me. After Khan, I told myself they were there for a reason, but… let's be honest. Marcus used my grief over Admiral Pike and pulled the wool right over my eyes._

 _I'm not going to get fooled again. And I sure as hell won't let that happen to Diana, either._

 _She's sharp as a plasma cutter. She knows so much about Earth's history -_ _ **my own planet's history**_ _\- but… I know there are things she doesn't. If she knew about Khan, about the Eugenics War…_

 _She'd never let Starfleet Intelligence have Vanessa._

 _And I wouldn't blame her._

 _I just want to make sure she's happy with the choice she made. I asked her to leave her planet, and now that she's here… Well, let's just say I don't think there's a single crew member who doesn't see her smile and think:_

" _Did I just watch the sun rise?"_

* * *

The _Yorktown_ should have been one of those sights to behold for Diana. If it had been any other situation, Jim was sure she would have lit up and asked him a hundred questions that he would have no way of answering without putting Scotty or Chekov between them. She'd proven to be as insatiably curious as _he_ was, and he hadn't thought that was probable. He thought anything was possible, but… well, goddesses of love and truth had definitely pushed at his ability to suspend his disbelief.

Unfortunately, he hadn't gotten a single smile - not even half of one - since they had set course for the starbase. Now that they were disembarking, he had hoped he'd at least get a few minutes to check in with her and let her know that he hadn't forgotten about his promise. He wasn't sure exactly how Commodore Paris would make good on the request, but he held no other official in higher regard than her. She'd been instrumental in helping him over the last year. Without her, he probably would have taken much longer to snap out of his depression - if at all.

As they reached the lobby, Jim's feet came to a halt as he watched his crew filter out past him. Sulu had agreed to hold the bridge, since they needed a skeleton crew to run while they performed a few maintenance tasks with the extra resources. So, he wasn't surprised to see Spock and Uhura pass him on their way to a restaurant they'd frequented during their extended stay. He didn't want to know details, but he was happy for the two of them. If the _Enterprise_ crew were his extended family, Uhura and Spock were the closest to siblings he had. Well, and Bones, but sometimes Bones jumped from brother to grandpa in a microsecond.

He couldn't ask him about this whole Vanessa situation, either. He knew his chief medical officer was on his side, but all Bones could do was give a recommendation. If Starfleet Medical ignored it, they still had to go up to the same Admiralty board. Either way, Jim would be having a tough conversation. He had a feeling Diana would probably do most of the talking. He got the impression she'd started drafting her argument the moment they had parted in the lounge.

Jim really needed to keep all thoughts of the observation lounge as far from his mind as possible. That was _not_ going to help him. He wasn't the young ladies' man he used to be, but… he'd found that just being friends with the most beautiful woman in the galaxy was proving difficult for his libido. And unless she started to give off signals that she was interested, he was going to have to work _very_ hard to keep those thoughts in check.

"Jim." Her voice had completely caught him off-guard. He'd been so engrossed in policing his thoughts, Diana had managed to sneak up behind him. He spun and flashed her a grin, even as his heart jumped a mile.

"Diana, hey, I didn't realize you were getting off the ship already." That was a flimsy excuse, and he knew it. He already had a feeling she would have wanted to jump ship the moment they got here, in the hopes that it meant she could meet with the Admiralty board after.

"I wanted to know when we would meet your admirals. I have a great deal to say to them." That radiant smile that he'd come to cherish was nowhere on her countenance. Instead, she had the stern frown that somehow managed to make her awe-inspiring and intimidating all at once.

"I…" He sighed. "I don't know yet. Commodore Paris said she'd contact me once she knew the situation, but most likely, we'll find out before she does. Admirals don't exactly wait around for red tape."

Her frown deepened, and Jim found himself scrolling through his entire mental catalog of proven ways to cheer a person up in the hopes that he'd find something for her. "We're talking about a woman's life, and they're playing some ridiculous political game. Man's World has not changed. Do they even care about what this will do to her?"

Jim could tell that he would be the next target on her slowly growing list of people to be perturbed with, and he desperately wanted to avoid that. "They do, yes. They're just… focused on the big picture. This isn't the dark ages, though." He caught her eye and winked, then in a very similar tone to the one she'd used on him, he intoned: "We Starfleet do not torture."

Diana rose an eyebrow in challenge, propping her hands on her hips. She might have been in civilian garb - _really attractive civilian garb,_ his thoughts inconveniently reminded him - but her bracelets were poking out from her sleeves. It was a solid reminder that beneath the unassuming Ambassador was a warrior prepared to charge into battle. "Are you making fun of me? Because, we could have used the lasso on you-"

"Oh, come on, it was a joke. I'm trying to get your mind off of the waiting, because we can't control that. They're going to call for us when they're ready and not a moment before." Jim noticed a few crewmembers coming up behind them and reached out, gently steering Diana out of the way with a hand around her upper arm.

"Vanessa needs help now. And I don't think I should have to be patient…" Diana had trailed off, presumably distracted by something behind Jim.

He wasn't focused on that. Instead, he found himself watching his very own Ensign Chekov coming off of the docking bridge from the _Enterprise_ with a duffel bag the size of his crew uniforms and personal effects.

"Ensign Chekov!" He called, waving the young man over. "What exactly do you think you're doing?"

"Vat do you mean, sir? I saw ze message, you approved my transfer. I didn't realize zat you vould be so amenable - " His ensign was talking a mile a minute, and seemed more excited than anything else.

"Amenable?" It was Jim's turn to scowl now. He wracked his brain as he tried to process what was happening in front of him. "Wait, what transfer? Is that the notification I got last week? I haven't even had a chance to look at it - "

"But, I did, Captain Kirk." The voice came from behind Jim, and suddenly, he understood why Diana was staring over his shoulder. That voice sounded _eerily_ familiar. "Mister Chekov talked Commander Sitwell's ear off, and she requested he transfer to the _Farragut_ at the same time he asked for it. I figured I'd take care of it now, make it a little easier for everyone."

Jim turned to face the voice. Barrel-chested, more salt than pepper in his hair, and with a full, well-trimmed beard, the realization hit him like he'd just slammed to a stop mid-warp. He knew that face from a handful of meetings with the Admiralty Board. "Admiral Kent? You..." Jim found it impossible to ignore the resemblance now. "You look just like Superman…"

In the ensuing chaos, Chekov disappeared down the corridor.

"As he should." Diana said beside him. She gently moved him aside and crossed the distance between her and the gentleman with distinctly Admiral bars on his jacket. "He's... " She turned to face him and somehow, she was beaming. That smile he'd been seeking all morning lit up the room, all because of the admiral in front of her. She turned back. "Conner. Conner Kent." She reached up, resting her hands on either side of the admiral's face. "You look just like your father…"

Jim's jaw went a bit slack. "You're Superman's son." He added as an afterthought, "Admiral. Sir."

Conner chuckled and hugged Diana before looking over her shoulder to Jim. "Yes, son, I am. And I have to tell you thank you."

Jim's mouth moved aimlessly before he finally managed, "For what?"

"For letting me know my father was alive. And for bringing her back to our world." Conner turned to face Diana. "After all, who else would have known to make you Ambassador?"


	12. In the Shadow of Ares: Act I

**In the Shadow of Ares: Act I**

Admiral Kent - _the_ Admiral Kent - was actually Superman's son.

Like many other Starfleet officers, he had assumed that Admiral Conner Kent came from a long line of similarly named admirals. One was a Junior, the next the Third, and so on.

No. In fact, this Admiral Kent, who Jim remembered being at numerous fleet functions in the last few years, was the same man who had been there to help found Starfleet after MACO disbanded. He was nearly immortal; and had known Diana presumably since his childhood. Jim found himself daunted, yet again, by how long-lived she was, and what that would mean for her future.

Jim squared his shoulders off and stood a bit straighter at the man's presence, hoping Diana wouldn't catch any sense that he might have been more than a little unsettled by the revelation. It wasn't that he was unhappy at the information; on the contrary, he knew that having more connections to the Federation and Starfleet would help Diana find reasons to stay off of Themyscira. And he had to admit, he had a selfish desire to be there while she travelled the galaxy.

It was just a bit jarring that he was Superman's son. And was also an admiral who had apparently just transferred his navigational helmsmen and had been reading his logs. For a brief moment, he found himself wondering if he'd said anything he didn't want getting back to Diana. But, the consideration didn't last for long. Jim wasn't exactly known for apologizing for his honesty.

" _You_ sent the offer to make me an ambassador?" Diana's fascination with the admiral had seemingly warded her off the warpath for the moment, and he was in no hurry to steer her back. He knew that having her march into the Commodore's office would be akin to snapping at the hand that fed her. "I would have assumed you'd retired decades ago, Conner."

"I did." Admiral Kent smiled, glancing over at Jim. "But, as Captain Kirk can tell you, we've had an exciting few years. When we suddenly found ourselves a few admirals shy of a full board, I agreed to return to Starfleet and help with the reconstruction of our fleet and intelligence community."

Jim didn't return the smile. He knew exactly _when_ Kent was referring to, and he hardly looked upon that time casually. He still occasionally woke up in the middle of the night, recalling Chris Pike's face staring blankly towards the ceiling. It wasn't an amicable retirement party. People died.

As if the older man could see right through Jim's stony expression, his mirthful expression faded into one more expected of a revered admiral. "My apologies, Captain. I know you and Admiral Pike knew each other well. I meant no disrespect. I know he was quite proud of the work you'd done."

 _I see greatness in you, Jim. But, now I see there's not an ounce of humility._

Jim inhaled, a controlled motion to keep his temper in check. "Of course, thank you, sir." He nodded, clasping his hands behind his back. He could feel himself dropping into the familiar behavior of addressing a senior officer. He had no reason to expect that his interactions with the admiral would change in any material way, just because he'd met his father. He expected Diana would be careful to keep her relationship with Conner just that - hers. By the time he glanced back up towards them, Diana's eyes had been on him. Her expression had slipped from simple joy to something more… open. Emotional. She was pitying him.

 _Quit complicating things, Jim._ He chided himself, then deliberately turned to address Admiral Kent. "I'm glad that you were the one to read my report, sir, if it meant Ambassador Prince is now aboard my ship. I can say with absolute certainty that she's been a positive influence, and having an ambassador aboard the ship during first contact will, with any luck, help the next time we're set to meet with the Teenaxi delegation."

"Of course, son. Anything you need to make sure Diana's comfortable, you just let me know. You have my full support." Kent kept close to Diana as he spoke. It was closer than she let most people get on his ship. For a fleeting moment, Jim could tell he was a bit jealous, but the sensation left as quickly as it came. After all, it wasn't like he had any right to be. Most days, he was just grateful to be in Diana's presence at all.

"With all due respect, sir," Jim offered him an easy smile, but his tone was a bit more urgent. "You just took my chief navigation officer with no notice or replacement in sight, so I'm not entirely sure how that's ensuring Diana has all she needs." Jim chose not to address the fact that he'd gone right over his head to do it, too. Crewmembers were transferred all the time, but Jim normally had the courtesy of being able to sign off on it.

Beside the admiral, Diana crossed her arms and turned to face the older man with an expression that definitely suggested she'd known him since he was - what was it Bones would say? _Knee-high to a grasshopper._

A Kryptonian grasshopper. _Did Krypton have grasshoppers?_

"He has a point, Conner. We came back to the _Yorktown_ because your Starfleet is demanding I hand over a Themysciran citizen. And now Ensign Chekov is being transferred? I know I taught you better. If you are a General, it is your duty to know every soldier under your command and to treat them as your equal in all things. Why didn't you tell him before you approved it? Chekov's quite good at his job - exceptionally so." Diana rattled off the lecture with ease and Jim found it impossible to hide a genuinely amused smile. He hadn't seen an admiral get dressed down with quite so much skill and familiarity before.

Admiral Kent looked appropriately embarrassed. The older man looked from Diana back to Kirk, then back to Diana before he finally managed, "I… suppose I owe an apology for that as well."

Jim stifled a chuckle and shook his head. "I don't need an apology, sir, just an explanation would be fine. I didn't even know Ensign Chekov was interested in moving to the _Farragut_. He'd said something about leaving her behind when we rendezvoused earlier, but I… admittedly thought it was about a girl he met." He tilted his head back and forth a bit as he considered Pavel's behavior over the last two weeks. "I suppose I should have realized the only thing more enticing than the _Enterprise_ would be the fleet's newest ship."

"I only thought, given that the admiralty board asked that you bring Miss Katalepis back to the _Yorktown_ and the _Farragut_ was here for a resupply, it would be an ideal opportunity." Admiral Kent shrugged a bit. Some of his gravitas and age seemed to have disappeared in the face of a woman who clearly knew him all too well. "For the _Farragut_ , anyway. But, I promise you, I have a cadet who will be graduating the Academy next month that will be ideal for the position. Personally requested the assignment to the _Enterprise_ , and the advisory panel assures me that it's a solid posting. A good fit."

Jim sighed and reached up to scrub his face with one hand. "I appreciate that, sir, I really do, but I prefer to select my own crew."

"Well, then I'll have the cadet's file sent along and you can approve or deny yourself. But, Ensign Chekov is needed on the _Farragut_ , so I'm sure you have a few ensigns that would be more than honored to work a shift or two for their captain."

"I…" Jim struggled to find a real issue with that argument that wasn't entirely based around his own ego. He came up short. "Well, that's probably true."

"Great. Then, it's settled." The Admiral turned to Diana and shot her a smile, broad and boyish. "Let's catch up. I came all the way out here to meet with you. What happened to you? How did you end up on the other side of the Alpha Quadrant?"

Diana took the questions in stride. "It is a long story, and one that I…" She trailed off, looking to Jim. "One I only wish to tell once. Captain, Admiral, is there somewhere we can meet in private?"

Jim had been hoping ever since he'd met the Amazons that Diana would tell him exactly how she ended up on the planet Themyscira after all that time on Earth. He wasn't about to stop that door from opening now. "I know I had a captain's office when I was here. I would imagine that the admiral has something similar…" He offered, quirking an eyebrow in question. "If you don't mind, sir."

"Not at all. They're this way." Conner looped his arm over Diana's shoulders and steered her down the hall, the two of them already chatting about something.

Jim felt his heart twist a little in that irrationally jealous way and stomped that down before following behind them, a bit resigned.

He was definitely making things complicated.

* * *

The _Yorktown_ was a breathtaking marvel of technology. Diana had wanted to address it with Jim, but she'd had no real time to process exactly what it did, how it achieved such a diverse environment. But, until they'd settled the issue of Vanessa's treatment, she couldn't afford to distract herself. And at the moment, she had a more personal, yet no less awe-inspiring situation to handle.

Conner Kent was an admiral. And as an admiral, he had the office to prove it.

His office was easily the size of the bridge. It was barren in comparison, with far fewer consoles and displays, but it conveyed the authority and status in a way she had seen countless times. It was very similar to what she'd grown used to working with various governments on earth.

"Have a seat, both of you." Conner motioned to the relaxed, furnished area nearest the window. Two loveseats and an armchair framed a coffee table. She took a seat in the armchair. Jim followed a few moments after and took a seat at one of the couches. Conner finally joined them with a pitcher of water and a few glasses full of ice. "I figured you'd enjoy some water that wasn't recycled. I bring a case of spring water every time I leave Earth."

Diana smiled and nodded. She took the glass when offered and enjoyed a cool sip of water that didn't still have the slightly metallic aftertaste of the _Enterprise_ reclamation systems. She was still trying to understand exactly how much time had passed for him. Themyscira had been a place outside of time, and while she'd begun to understand it in abstracts for the _Enterprise_ crew, meeting someone from her own past, a man who had still been young and vibrant… well, he looked older than his own father. How could she reconcile that?

She must have been staring. Conner rose an eyebrow at her, clearly curious as to what she found so interesting. Clearing her throat, she set her glass down and smiled. "You look older than him."

The smile on his face was his father's, too. Although, she felt that what Conner had gained in white hair, his father had taken in countenance. "I guess I shouldn't be surprised. I'm half-human, so the sun didn't have quite the same effect on me. By the time you disappeared, we looked like twins, not father and son." She flicked her eyes towards Jim. She told herself she was warning Conner that the captain would have questions, but she had to admit… she wanted to know he was there. She wanted him to understand what her life had been like. This was a rare opportunity to show him her past: she wouldn't get another.

"Our sun was yellow for a century," She continued. "But, recently, it's begun to turn red. Kal has begun to age, albeit slowly."

"That's why the _Enterprise_ was there." Jim said. "I didn't realize that had something to do with it. We have very few public records on Kryptonians."

"That's on purpose." Conner replied. "When MACO was disbanded and the Federation formed, Krypton had been gone for centuries. I was the only one left…" Diana furrowed her brow, concerned. Kara had still been on earth when she… "In the public spotlight. There wasn't much point in talking too much about us. I joined Starfleet under my civilian identity. They kept my alias classified, but it helped make sure I would move around enough that no one would wonder why I was taking forever to age."

"I guess you smile too much for someone to think you were half-Vulcan." Jim joked over the rim of his glass.

Conner beamed right back at him. "I'm guessing Commander Spock's not much for jokes."

"Oh, he's got 'em. They're far and few between, but when he hits you…" Jim shook his head, chuckling. "He drives my chief medical officer nuts."

"Doctor McCoy is a fount of wit." Diana glanced over at her old friend. "It's like watching Kal and Bruce." With Conner before her, the wounds of the past that she'd kept in check were slowly opening. Again, she could hear Menalippe warning her of such a thing. "He misses you, by the way. He asked me to find you."

Conner's smile faded. The age came back to his expression. "Somehow, I doubt that, Diana. He was more than ready to leave after mom."

Diana's heart suddenly ached. She had hoped that he would have realized the truth, but instead, it was exactly as Kal had feared. "No, Conner… that wasn't the case at all. He didn't want to leave."

He met her gaze with the same intensity as his father. "You've been gone for two hundred years, Diana. You picked up Themyscira and you disappeared."

She reached out, resting her hand on his arm. "Conner, he loves you. He only wanted to stop himself from repeating Bruce's mistakes." She had hoped that seeing her friends in their youth grow old would have somehow grown… less bitter and more sweet. But, that blessing was never to come.

"What did... Bruce... do that was bad enough for Superman to leave Earth?" The question came from Jim. He was cautious, almost hesitant. It was clear that he didn't want to butt into what had become a more private conversation, but he was understandably at a loss.

"It is not what he did, but what he did _not_ do." Diana's expression rippled with nearly-forgotten sorrow as she found her thoughts drifting back to Gotham City. "Bruce was the only one of us who had… no superhuman abilities. Not of a physical nature. He was a genius and he had the resources of a billionaire so that he could fund every weapon and tool imaginable. But, he could not escape age."

"He wasn't the only one who lost mom. She aged. That's what people do." Conner grumbled of his father, but she shook her head to silence him.

"He left because when Bruce was too old to fight, he refused to give the mantle to another. Bruce did not want to risk Tim or Damian's lives, even when they had proven themselves many times over. So, when he died…" Diana could hear the screams from victims of fear toxin, the six months of mayhem in the city that had nearly been purged of its evil. "No one was ready to stop the evil that came. By the time Damian was able to step in, Gotham had already become the No Man's Land. Your father felt if he had just convinced Bruce that he had done _enough_ , that someone else could shoulder the weight, Gotham would have survived. He wanted you to step into the role you had asked for."

Conner had probably drawn up countless arguments as to where they had gone and why. They both knew that assuming and knowing would never be the same, so she wasn't surprised when he finally said, "I can understand wanting to retire, wanting to leave for Themyscira after mom died. But, what I can't understand is why he didn't _tell_ me."

"Because it was an accident." Diana breathed. She had not realized how difficult it would be to tell Conner everything until she was faced with the situation. And Kal was not there to help. "When we came to Themyscira, we brought a number of S.T.A.R. Labs scientists with us. They thought that some of the crystal technology from Zod's ship could be used to amplify the barrier that the gods had once placed on the island. We expected to return back to Metropolis once the work had been done."

"Then what went wrong?"

"It was not shield technology that they had unlocked." She frowned. "It was the same pocket dimension technology that had saved the city of Kandor. It transported Themyscira through a boom tube onto a failsafe planet - one that Kryptonian scientists felt could be suitable for life. We never meant to leave, Conner." Diana gently ran her hand down his arm again. She hoped she was giving him some comfort. "When we are able to return to Themyscira, he would love nothing more than to see you. To see what we've accomplished."

A long moment passed as he watched Diana's hand move. She could tell he was mulling everything over. But, she expected to see relief. Instead, his expression moved to a more… guilty one. "I don't know that he'd want to see me. A lot has happened. We've had failures. Starfleet, the Federation, it's all still so new."

"We do not fight because we wish to win. We fight because we must." Diana said softly. She had helped train him along with the others who took over the League. She had to hope he would see reason. "It doesn't matter if you fail, it only matters that you tried. And that no matter how many times you are knocked down, you get back up."

Conner chuckled, but there was no real mirth to it. "Says the indestructible goddess…"

"Goddess or not, I wish to know everything that you've gone through, Conner." His expression suggested he was less willing to provide that to her than she would have liked. "I haven't had enough time to read up on any history. I barely reached the formation of the Federation before we found the sphere and Vanessa became my priority."

"As she should be." He remarked. Given the way his expression shifted, how similar it was to Kal, she knew he was changing the subject. "And I know you object to turning her over to Starfleet Intelligence, but they can help her."

The fact that Conner was in such a position of authority did relieve some of the concern, but she could still feel a knot in her stomach. She was fairly certain she'd never be truly comfortable with the decision. "I'll consider it." She finally conceded.

A communicator chirped and Jim stood quickly. "I'm so sorry, I'll be right back." Diana watched him go as he pulled his communicator and flipped it open before disappearing down the hall. "Hey, Bones…"

"You like working with Kirk?" Conner pulled her attention away from staring at a now empty doorway.

She inhaled, trying to focus her thoughts. "Yes, yes, I do." Diana forced her attention to the question at hand, the professional space which she shared with the captain. "He cares deeply for his crew. And he kept my confidence when I asked him not to speak of what occurred on Themyscira with his senior staff until I was ready. In fact, I would be more shocked if he enjoyed working with me." She smiled. "We both know I can be trying."

"Only in the best way." He grinned. "You make people want to be better, Diana. It's a very admirable trait."

Before she could remind him how much he disliked her constant appealing to his better nature as a teen, they were spared the verbal skirmish by Jim. He strode back into the room just as he had clapped his communicator shut. "So, Bones tells me that Chekov's been making waves all over town about his transfer, and seeing as how I'm his current captain, it would be remiss of me not to offer him a going away party."

Diana quirked an eyebrow. "Doctor McCoy suggested a party?"

Jim chuckled. "The man likes a good drink. He keeps trying to impress you, so he's been on his best behavior."

She shook her head, smiling. "If that is his best behavior, then I hate to see his worst."

Jim scoffed, good-natured and teasing. "Come on, be nice."

Conner stood, and Diana followed, as it seemed appropriate. "Well, that works out. I still have some paperwork to file, so if you want to come back later this evening, we can talk a bit more."

She tilted her head, confused. "But, you and I still need to talk about what I've missed - "

"And we absolutely can later." He motioned for her to step past him towards the door. Begrudgingly, she did so, but she never took her eyes off of him. He was clearly trying to get rid of her. "But, go. Enjoy time with the crew. You're going to be working with them for at least the next year, you might want to get to know them." Conner looked _past_ her to Kirk, motioning to the door. "Thank you, Captain, you're dismissed. Please show her out."

Diana gaped, utterly stunned by the sudden about-face. Jim had gripped her arm and was - to his credit - gently guiding her out of the office, but no sooner than the doors closed in her face, they were locked. "Did he…" She blinked, whirling to face Jim, utterly perplexed. "Did he just _lock me out?_ "

Most likely due to his position as a captain, he seemed far less fazed by it. "Well, he _is_ an admiral, and he's probably not used to being told 'no' a whole lot - "

"I changed his _diapers!_ " Diana finally exploded, utterly amazed at how quickly the whole conversation had ended. She had finally found someone from her past, someone who could help her with Vanessa, and he had dismissed her. "And I love babies, but I _hate_ diapers! And he just _dismissed_ me!"

Jim's eyebrows shot up so fast they nearly reached his hairline. "Well, that's a hell of an image…"

"I haven't seen anyone who knows my life, who knew Bruce and the others, and he just kicked me out!" She propped her hands on her hips, then whirled back to the door again. "I could break this down - "

"Yeah, but please, don't." Jim grabbed her hand and slowly steered her back to him. They both knew she could have planted her feet, but he kept trying. "Diana… _please_ …" For just a moment, she was reminded of another time, another place. A city that smelled of smoke and garbage, of a different man trying to lead her away from her perceived goal, begging for her to put her sword down as exasperation threatened to take over. "Look, I think it's just as inconvenient as you do, but he's right. You need to get to know my crew, and frankly…" His hand lingered on her wrist as she huffed and tried to calm her temper. "If I have to go to this thing alone, Bones is gonna needle me about how I let Chekov go right out from under my nose. I'd rather not be tortured by my senior staff, so, please." He rested his hand on her shoulder. Diana noticed he had done that quite often lately. She tried not to think about whether or not he had _always_ done that. Certainly not when he thought she was a queen. "For me? For Chekov?"

At the thought that she would not be seeing the bright, fresh-faced ensign any time in the near future, Diana felt the last of her anger dissipate to a manageable level. Jim would help her get back to Conner, and they _would_ continue their conversation. After dinner.

"Yes. Of course."

* * *

As it turned out, dinner had been exactly what Diana really needed to get her mind off of that which she could not control in that moment. She had not given permission for Starfleet to take Vanessa and until she could speak with Conner again (and he wasn't available), she needed the distraction.

Dinner had been delicious; the company, delightful. She and Doctor McCoy had an opportunity to discuss Vanessa's health, which turned into the fifth time in a week he had reminded her that she owed him a physical. She conceded that once they were back en route to another system, she would gladly comply with the request. As he left to mingle, McCoy sounded as if he was just doing his job, but the glint in his eye suggested they both shared a mutual curiosity in what modern medicine could now reveal about her heritage. She knew Kal and Conner both had expressed reservations with sharing such information in the 21st century, but Diana did not. At least, not with Doctor McCoy himself.

She had excused herself from Jim long enough to carry on a polite conversation with Spock and Uhura in Vulcan, determined to hone her skills. The two of them were both pleased with her progress, but the exchange came to an unexpected halt when Diana thought she'd mentioned how much she wanted to sleep in a warm bed and had apparently said something to the effect of wanting to sleep in cancer. Once that faux pas had been managed, she was actually glad to be accosted by Chekov himself.

"Ambassador! I'm so disappointed I von't be able to join your for coffee anymore." The young ensign said with a bright smile. He already had a glass in hand, probably his third of the evening, and he was flushed with boyish youth and slight intoxication. He seemed so young, but he carried the maturity of a man beyond his years in many aspects. She was sure he would succeed.

"I'll miss you, too, Pavel. I had quite enjoyed hearing you sing. Russian is such a beautiful language, and I hear it so rarely."

Chekov grinned. " _Spasiba._ "

"But, I know you're excited." Diana picked up a flute from a passing tray. "You seemed quite put out when we left the _Farragut_."

"Oh, she is a beauty!" He said. "And I vas told zat I might be promoted to Lieutenant, junior grade."

"Congratulations." She rose her glass to him and tapped it to his tumbler. She sipped her wine and regarded him. "Just promise you won't forget us."

"Of course not!" Chekov leaned a bit closer to her, conspiratorial and unashamedly flirtatious. It was cute, if not completely misplaced. "I vill never forget ze _Enterprise._ A man never forgets his first lady. Or her crew."

Diana laughed, genuinely amused by the young man's candor. He was going to break many hearts in his life, she could tell. And he deserved such an exciting life. They all did. As the party continued on, as she solidified her relationships with the crew, she received the reminder she'd needed all night: Humanity had truly excelled past what she thought they could do. And she was sure they could do anything.

"Mister Chekov, are you flirting with my ambassador?" Jim suddenly came up behind him, looping an arm around his neck and pulling him in for a quick embrace. He was smiling, but Diana had noticed something she'd begun to associate with genuine amusement rather than polite amusement. There were no crow's feet. His smile did not reach his eyes. _He is pretending to enjoy himself. It hurts him to see Chekov go_ , she thought.

"Oh, no, sir! I vould never - "

"You absolutely would, and you're lucky that I don't mind." Jim released him, then clapped him on his back. "I'm gonna miss you, but you deserve the promotion. Sorry I kind of jumped down your throat about it earlier. It caught me off-guard."

"Y-Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. I sought you vould have seen ze transfer request and just assumed it vas approved." Chekov did look sufficiently put out, and Diana couldn't help but look to Jim, pouting slightly in sympathy for the boy.

And now Jim was truly smiling, his eyes on Diana in a way that made her wonder if he'd forgotten everyone else in the room. She remembered what it felt like when Steve did the same. It was the first comparison she'd made that day, the first time her mind had truly reminded her that she was playing with fire, and she had a tendency to allow herself to be burned.

"It's fine. Just do me a favor and don't do anything I wouldn't do." Taking a step back, Jim held his hand out to Chekov to shake. "Good luck, you're gonna be great on the _Farragut._ You've been a damn fine officer and I hate to lose you." The ensign took a moment to look at the hand, then back up to Kirk before he gripped it firmly.

"Thank you, sir."

Diana tried to find the right words to make it easier for the two of them, but she knew that watching an apprentice leave on their own path was a truly harrowing sensation.

Jim softened. "Go. Enjoy your party." Chekov nodded to the both of them, then wandered off again to say his goodbyes.

The corner of the room they stood in had suddenly gotten much quieter with him gone. Diana glanced over at Jim. He was staring into his glass as if he could divine the secrets of the universe from it. He would brood, she was sure. The expression… it was too much like Steve.

Diana did not want to think about Steve.

"Come on." She looped her arm around his and pulled him away towards the door. "Walk me back to the _Enterprise_ and tell me a sufficiently embarrassing story about Pavel so that you won't miss him tomorrow." It was probably the most casual she had been with him, but she hoped that keeping his mind off of what he was losing would help. It had struck Diana quite plainly that he was so ferociously protective of his crew, he did not know what to do when one of them was out of his reach.

She had had two hundred years to tell herself that she could only trust in the lessons she had taught.

Once the two of them were outside, watching transport shuttles zip off to parts unknown above them, she released his arm and simply kept pace with him for a change.

"Embarrassing stories, huh?" Jim said, scratching his jaw a bit. His five o'clock shadow had begun to come in over the course of the evening. "I have way more of those than needed for a walk."

"Well, then, start somewhere and we'll see how many you get through before we have to turn in." Diana motioned to the building where they both knew Admiral Kent kept his quarters. "Clearly, he's not going to speak to me until the morning."

He smirked, watching her rather than the path ahead of them. "He's probably too busy feeling dressed down by someone who knows entirely too much about him compared to anyone else in Starfleet." When Diana giggled in response, he continued. "Seriously, he probably heard your crack about his diapers. He's lucky I don't have the wagging tongue I used to. That kind of dirt would have spread around the Academy in my day like wildfire."

"You were a gossip?" Diana feigned shock. She had met many charismatic men, and many of them enjoyed mischief in their youth. Jim still enjoyed it. She had a feeling that was a large reason why he was still a captain of a ship.

"I liked a good bit of drama, yes." He nodded. She noticed his smile couldn't seem to fade. She had a suspicion she'd accomplished her goal of keeping him distracted. "But, I'm a captain now. Much more responsible."

"Oh, _much_ more." She agreed, more than a bit teasing.

"I don't think you should be allowed to make fun of me," Jim's feet stilled as he turned to face her. "You thought I was responsible enough to save your planet."

"Yes, but you were the one who told me you got your ship by dumb luck." Diana grinned back at him.

"That implies that I'm clearly much more responsible now, I'm still captain." He motioned far off in the direction that they were headed, where the _Enterprise_ waited under one of the water features. When Diana didn't concede the point openly, he sighed and tossed his hands up in surrender. "You know what, if I have to prove to you that I'm responsible, we're going to do it the right way. Come on." He changed direction and motioned for her to follow him.

"What exactly is 'the right way?'" Diana tilted her head, but followed after.

"No boring, adult conversation should ever have to happen without something fun. Not when I'm off-duty, anyway." The two of them made their way to an entirely new part of the _Yorktown_ 's main gardens. Diana didn't recognize any of the buildings, but she could hear more people.

"Jim, you do realize that alcohol does not effect me as it does you, right?" She smirked as he glanced back at her. "I'd drink you under the table and not break a sweat."

"We're not gonna drink." He shook his head and picked up the pace. He must not have thought she was going fast enough, because his hand went to her arm again, gently urging her forward. "This is way better."

They had left the more subdued area of the gardens and had practically stumbled onto a populated courtyard. Various shops with a myriad of neon or holographic signs seemed to populate every square inch of the place.

There was one destination that Jim clearly had in mind, and when she recognized the sign, she was more than happy to oblige. " _Ice cream_." She practically moaned, following after him. "You don't have ice cream on the ship, I was afraid humans didn't know how to make it anymore!"

Jim turned back to her, a true grin from ear-to-ear gracing his features. "Well, then, I am happy to make your day."

The duo continued forward, intent on cheering themselves up.

"Augment now! _Augment now!"_ The chant started somewhere down the pathway to the left of the ice cream store, but held such a violent edge to it that Diana completely went still. She turned to face the direction of the shouting crowd, brow furrowed with worry. "Bring strength back to humanity! Augment now, never surrender!"

Any thought of food or comfort left her. Instead, she felt her eyes grow warm as a cold weight settled in her stomach and she felt her heart sink. She knew those words. She had not heard them in so long, but she _knew_ them. "Jim…" She asked, quiet and almost fearful as she stepped towards the crowd. "What are they talking about?"

"Augment now! Honor Khan! Test your children!" A man was shouting at every person who passed by, fervently shaking a padd in his hand. Behind him, two others held large holo-boards with choice phrases.

 **NO HALF-BREED BABIES.**

 **AUGMENTATION IS THE FUTURE.**

 **LIVE FOR KHAN.**

"No…" Diana breathed. They could not mean him… "Jim, who are they talking about? What is this?"

The holo-board switched again.

 **KHAN NOONIAN SINGH WAS OUR SAVIOR.**

 **KHAN SUFFERED FOR YOU.**

 **AUGMENT NOW.**

"Diana…" Jim's voice had gone stony, and his hand went to her arm again. "We should go."

"No, no, I don't understand." She turned to face him, only to see that he looked as haunted as she felt. "Khan Noonian Singh was a criminal. I was there when the Augment project began, and he was _terrible_. Why would these people idolize him? He was in rehabilitation. Damian had him in custody, I don't... "

Someone else had lost their temper with the group shouting. A young woman - perhaps part-Andorian, considering her small, flesh-colored antennae - was being accosted by the leader of the group.

"Race traitor!" The man screamed. "You're not human! The Eugenics War should have wiped your mother out! Her and the rest of those alien-screwing - "

Diana didn't hear the rest.

Her hand was at the man's throat, his legs dangling a foot above the ground as she held him aloft.

This was not what she expected of humanity. Her voice was low, raw with anger and despair. She had so much to say to this man, so much that threatened to boil over.

But, all she could manage in that lethal voice was a question she had never hoped she would need to ask of humanity again:

" _What. War._ "


	13. In the Shadow of Ares: Act II

**In the Shadow of Ares: Act II**

 _ **Author's Note:**_ _I don't normally do these, but I feel it's important to say for this next chapter. I know that this next chapter could be construed as politically charged, and to some extent it should be, but I wrote this back in early July long before the events in Charlottesville. The views of the characters debating certain aspects of how to deal with the episode's bad guys are not necessarily mine, and should be viewed in the universe they're written in. Believe me, I have personal opinions about the Charlottesville events and this is not my particular platform for my activism._

* * *

This had easily been the single most awkward day of Jim's year. He couldn't give it as much credit as the most awkward day of his life, but it was definitely close.

Initially, he'd wanted to hear what Diana had to say to Admiral Kent, but when it had turned into an incredibly personal conversation about a revered admiral spilling to his… aunt? Maybe?... That his dad had abandoned him two centuries ago… he'd been wishing for any distraction. Then, to top it all off, he'd lost Chekov due to political maneuvering he still didn't trust. And who was Bruce? Every database search he'd done in regards to Diana had turned up nothing regarding a Bruce. Then again, it hadn't told him that Kal-El had the last name Kent, so it was clear there'd been a lot lost between the 2040s and now.

The only thing that Jim wanted to be was the captain of mint chocolate chip ice cream and to shamelessly regale Diana with tales of tribbles and Harry Mudd and anything else that he could bring to mind.

 _This_ was not the distraction he had in mind.

One minute, he'd been trying to pull Diana away from the Augmenters. They'd popped up a year or two after Khan had been put into Federation custody and cryo, but they'd mostly stayed planetside. The next, she had literally flashed away from him and was across the courtyard.

He'd seen her move quickly, but that was far faster than he'd thought she could move. Her expression was the embodiment of righteous fury, and she could tell the jerk in her grip couldn't breathe. And she wasn't going to release him any time soon.

" _Diana!_ " Jim shouted, sprinting across the courtyard to catch up with her. "Diana, let him go!"

Diana was ignoring him, or at least ignoring his request. Instead, she hauled the man higher. " _What._ _ **War**_ _?!"_ She repeated, more enraged than before.

Jim had hoped that she had already learned about it. Part of him hoped that Kent would have told her. But, that had been wishful thinking. Instead, he shifted and grabbed her arm tightly. He couldn't bring it back down, but he could at least force her attention. "The Eugenics War, Diana!" Her gaze didn't waver, but he could tell she was listening. Her eyes went a bit wider, her expression a bit more vulnerable. Under the anger, there was such pain. And he hated that he had to be the one to amplify it even more. "He's talking about the Eugenics War. Back in the 2040s, after your island disappeared. Look, I'll tell you everything, but you have to put him down. No matter what stupid shit comes out of his mouth, he has a right to say it if he's not hurting anyone else." It was working, but not fast enough. The rest of the Augmenters were approaching them now. "Diana, please, this is _not_ how we handle this. I know it's terrible, but they have the right to assemble unless it escalates to violence. If you hurt them, then you're giving them fuel. Exactly what they want."

Diana's grip finally buckled. In a huff, she dropped the man, staring down at him with rageful, pained eyes. "You are everything I fought to protect humanity from. You're just spreading the hatred Ares set into motion! You are his shadow on the walls, and you worship violence, don't you see that?"

Jim knew it was probably going to end poorly for him, but he stepped between her and the protester, never removing his grip on her arm. He pulled her close, forcing her to look at him and only him. "Diana, you cannot do this right now. You are not going to change their minds today, they've had two generations of people telling them how to think and who to hate. Khan just gave them something to stand behind."

"You will let go of me now, Kirk." Diana hissed. He felt his entire body shudder at the sheer power behind her voice, but he held fast.

"No. I completely understand why you're angry, but I'd like to think you know I'm right." When she leveled her gaze at him, it took everything in him not to back down. "If you don't trust them, at least trust that I'd tell you the truth. Khan can't hurt anyone now."

Diana's angry haze finally lifted. Her body went just slack enough that he felt he could let go. He didn't have a chance to say anything else before the protesters had surrounded them. He turned to face them, placing Diana at his back out of instinct more than anything else.

"Look," Jim began, his voice as steady as if he was staring down a Romulan or Klingon in the middle of battle. "I can't legally have security arrest any of you for this, but what you're preaching is the antithesis of what the Federation hopes to accomplish. And she's right. You're worshipping violence and something you don't even fully understand. The Eugenics War devastated Earth, and if you think you have allies here - "

"You're him!" One of the protesters growled, urgently pointing to their padd. "You're James Kirk! Your ship took Khan!"

"Where is he?" Another one of them cried. Jim felt his stomach turn unpleasantly. He had a feeling he knew where this was going.

"Give Khan back to us! He saved us! He knows the way!" The group shouted at them from all directions, advancing quickly. They tightened their circle around the captain and ambassador, ignorant or simply didn't care that they were dangerously close to crossing the line from legal protest to mob. He felt Diana shift behind him and he could feel the line of her back against his. " _Traitor! You hate Earth!_ _ **Give us Khan! Tell us where he is!**_ **"**

"Leave us alone!" Diana demanded, but it barely made a dent over their fervent shouting. "You're idolizing an evil man! I do not wish to hurt you."

"Yeah, I'm not sure they care…" Jim muttered. "They're not interested in you, they are _definitely_ mad at me."

He had just enough time to get his hands up to block before a holo-board went hurtling towards his head. He knocked it aside, ignoring how much ten pounds of rounded metal could still rattle his bones and hoped for the best.

Unfortunately, there wasn't just the one board. The crowd swarmed upon them, screaming for the return of their perceived leader. Jim blocked the first few blows, but before he knew it, he'd been pulled away from Diana and was in the middle of a dogpile. He reached for his phaser - as a last precaution - but heard, rather than saw, it get kicked away and go skittering across the courtyard.

He managed to grab at one of his attackers by the ankle and yank him down, but before he could get up enough to land enough of a blow to escape, something clocked him in the back of his head and his world pitched sideways. He grunted in pain, but nevertheless turned to face that new attacker. He swung, a wild haymaker that didn't go nearly as well or as accurately as Starfleet had trained him. He missed the broad-shouldered guy who still held his weapon - the datapadd - and instead left himself open to get gut-checked by someone else. Jim went down again, hands back up to fend off unskilled but painful punches and kicks.

" _Get away from him!_ " Diana's voice cut through the crowd, accompanied by a rush of air above him.

And then Jim was flying.

More appropriately, Diana had one arm locked around his waist in a vice grip and they - no, _she_ was flying. He was along for the ride.

As the crowd went still, equally as stunned at the sight, Jim struggled to shift in her grip enough to look up at her. "You can fly, too?" He shouted over the rush of air. "When were you gonna tell me this?"

Diana looked down at him, her expression surprisingly neutral. "It hadn't come up."

Jim's stomach flipped unpleasantly as the two of them went higher up. "Watch out, we're getting closer to the center of the station. Gravity gets screwy there." When she didn't answer, he grabbed at her arm, forcing her to look at him. "Diana, I appreciate the rescue, but I'm serious!"

"We're almost there. I promise I'll stay low." She replied, her expression solemn. He couldn't imagine what was going through her mind at the time, either. And he had a bad feeling that he knew where they were going.

After being hauled around into the air like a kitten, Jim was more than a little relieved that Diana at least touched down in a way that he could stand up on his own. They were back in the neighborhood where the admiral's office was located. This was going to be rough.

Clearing his throat, he tugged down his uniform shirt back into place and looked her over in awe yet again. "I'm starting to think you're actually my guardian angel…" He quipped, hoping to catch her eye for just a moment.

It didn't work.

Diana strode past him towards the building, hands balled into fists.

"Diana…" Jim tried to catch her attention again, already resigned to what he knew was coming. He followed after her through the doors and down the hall before he finally managed to take a step or two ahead of her. "Diana, come on, talk to me. Don't go in there and do something you'll regret."

She stopped and looked him over for a moment before finally replying. "Believe me, I won't regret anything I have to say to him."

"You say that, but - "

"Besides, he's not the only one who knew about this war." She narrowed her eyes, lips pursed and jaw clenched. " _You_ did." With a smooth motion, she pushed him aside and continued on.

Jim was pretty sure any trust he'd had with Diana was gone.

* * *

Diana's mind was racing. Another war. _Another war_ , and one so close to when they'd left. _It_ _ **cannot**_ _be,_ she kept repeating to herself. But, even Jim had known, and what was worse, she could sense his guilt rolling off of him in waves. He _knew_ , and he'd chosen not to tell her. Just as Conner had.

 _You should have started at the beginning, and then you never would have let it go so far_ ….

Diana shook her head as she tried to clear her mind free of persistent memories. Every step away from Jim, even as he'd remained frozen in the hallway behind her, felt too much like those moments when Steve had left her to stop the Germans and their weapons. She had been shaken, she had let him go. But, she would have followed him. If not for Ares…

Raising a fist to the door, she pounded for entrance to Conner's office.

Before she could lose patience and knock the door down, it slid open. She charged inside, expecting to lay right into Conner, but the sight of him made her pause. One of the chairs in the office where she had sat not an hour previous was missing. Conner had his back to her, looking out a window and into the central atrium of _Yorktown_. He had a glass in his hand of some sort of amber liquid, and his posture was rounded, slumped. _Aged._ It was surprising. When Diana last saw Conner, he was 24, strong, straight backed, square shouldered, with a boyish grin permanently fixed on his face. Even on his worst days he always had a buoyant optimism. Now he looked ancient, every bit his 244 years.

He had just become a hero when they left, ready to face the world's darkness.

The darkness had given him just as much as it had given Diana in half that time, if not more.

She resumed her slow march towards him, but with each step, the anger subsided to what she knew had truly fueled her. She had only just learned of this war. He had _lived_ it.

"What happened when I left Man's World, Conner?" She asked. Her voice was soft, the raw anger had melted out of her at the stark realization that yet again, the world moved around her and Diana stood, never changing, never wavering. She had the benefit of eternity. So many others did not. "Why do those people preach to honor Khan Noonian Singh?" She swallowed, choosing her words carefully as she came to a halt behind him. "What was this Eugenics War they speak of?" _What was so devastating that you could not tell me yourself?_

Conner's shoulders tensed for just a moment, long enough for him to sit up and knock back the last of the drink in his hand. It was only then that she could see he had tucked the remainder of the bottle between his legs. There was far less remaining than she would have hoped. Much like his father, there had been a time when Conner could not get drunk. To see him this way… "It was… two hundred years ago. And I can still remember the names of every single person we lost in the fight."

"It was two hundred years ago for you." She crouched down beside him, a hand on his knee. "But, when I left this world, it was on the brink of peace. I don't understand."

He turned to her, bleary-eyed. The lines of his face were deeply set. "I know you were against Damian's Augment project when he started it. You didn't like the idea of purposely giving humans powers that they couldn't understand or control. And I warned him against working with Khan. I told him he couldn't be trusted." Conner poured another glass of liquor, the scent practically hitting her in the face. "Eventually, he came around, but not until after you'd disappeared. When you and dad left, the Augment movement took that as a sign that you'd given up on us. That it was time for _them_ to take control. Even when Khan in cryo-stasis, it wasn't enough to stop the war from happening." As he went to take a drink, her hand went up to rest on his wrist, urging the glass away. He sighed over at her. "Diana, please. I'm old. If you want to know, then let me have the damn drink."

Diana swallowed, then released his hand. She stood, taking stock of the room once more. She found the chair that had been missing, along with what had once been the coffee table. Pulling it free, she brushed glass from the cushion and righted it before taking a seat.

Conner watched her. If he had an opinion about her attempts to right the small part of the world she could see, he kept it to himself. "Others like Khan started to take over their local governments. One by one, countries fell to this… Augmentation virus. Damian couldn't keep a handle on the technology he'd built to supplement the League, and we were losing supporters fast. Too fast."

Damian Wayne had always been too much like his father. He had wanted to change the world and thought that his money and intellect could do so. She and others had tried to reason with him, but none more so than Conner. They had grown up together. "What about Tim?" She didn't want the answer… but she needed it, all the same.

"Tim was against the project. He left the League and went into public office. He had hoped he could beat the Augments at their own game." Conner's eyes slid shut. Diana didn't need to know the details to know that ghosts haunted his mind. "He failed."

Diana closed her eyes, hoping to stem back the tide of horror and sorrow that threatened to swallow her. Bruce's adopted sons… both gone, both failed.

"The conflict officially started in 2050. When it ended, the Augments had been soundly beaten by their own governments, but any hope or trust in superpowered people that humans had was gone." She forced her eyes open so she could check on Conner. He sounded so distant, she was worried he was leaving her altogether. "In 2053, the Eastern Coalition led a series of attacks against the rest of the United States of America. It drew the entire world into conflict. That… came to a head with a mass release of nuclear warheads from all sides." He drew a long breath. Diana could feel her hands shaking.

"How many?" She whispered, her eyes filled with tears.

"600 million people. It would have been more, but…" His voice caught, heavy with emotions she could tell he'd spent a long time burying. "Kara led the last of us. We all took as many of the warheads out as we could." He cleared his throat, looking up at her, glassy-eyed. "That's why I was so happy to hear that you'd survived, Diana. Because, you see…. There are none of us left. World War Three ended… because the League was gone. And after the governments of the world realized they'd destroyed their best, last defense against themselves, they ended it. I left society and remained in the Fortress because I was too ashamed of what happened. How things had gone so wrong." He laughed a bit. "I'm not here because I want to be. I'm here because this is my penance. I have to make Starfleet better, because if I don't…" He went to take a drink, then stopped. He laughed without mirth, as if the world itself was a joke. "Then what the hell did they all die for?"

* * *

The Yorktown's artificial day-night cycle gave Diana no real sense with which to ground herself, and the _Enterprise_ had not been any better. Therefore, she had no idea what time it was and there was no sun in sight she could bathe in. She felt rudderless, utterly drained, and profoundly sorrowful. Conner was too much like his father, and could not be consoled. Once he had assured her that he was no danger to himself, she'd spent a few moments to embrace him before wandering the station aimlessly.

The closest she could come to a brief respite was a lush garden on one of the inner rings. The plant life was bioluminescent, casting the entire glade in a soothing, blue hue that brought her just the barest comforts of Atlantis. She had brought with her a datapadd that Conner had apparently already queued up for when she inevitably confronted him about the truth.

He truly did know the names of all of the those in his Justice League. And she read them all. She committed each of them to her memory and wished that they were all granted places in Elysium - if such a place ever existed.

She also took note of the names of those who had somehow survived through it. The Allen and West families had forged a dynasty of great individuals whose accomplishments brought humanity closer to peace. Arthur and Mera had retreated to Atlantis, but were still the protectors of Earth's seas.

But, so many never survived. So many of them suffered because humanity was manipulated and turned upon those who wished only to protect them.

"For what it's worth, I'm sorry." He had come up so quietly, and she had been so distracted, she didn't see Jim Kirk until he was standing beside her. He had changed out of his uniform. For the first time since they'd met, she finally saw him in what she considered civilian garb. Jeans, a shirt and leather jacket. He looked remarkably down to earth in that moment. He looked remarkably like…

"You don't have anything to apologize for." She breathed, smiling sadly up at him before she turned her attention back to the glowing plant life. It was best if she did not look at him. She had spent the last few hours slipping into the past. It would be so easy to think of him as Steve, to ask him to tell her about snow and marriage and breakfast… "I could have found out about this at any time. I had no right to be upset with you or Conner. For both of you, it was history." She set the padd in her hand down on the bench beside her. "I found many excuses _not_ to seek this out, but the signs were there."

Jim shifted before he moved to stand in front of her, hands in his pockets. His eyes were scanning her, as if he could divine how she felt. Diana almost laughed. She had no idea how she was feeling herself. "Nevertheless, I offered this life to you. I pulled you off your planet, away from your people, and I did have an opportunity to tell you. I just… " Sighing, he leaned back and stared at the ceiling, struggling with whatever he was thinking. "I didn't want to have to be the one to show you how much of a mess we'd made of the world."

The anger she had felt, the pure rage at humanity's folly, had been far too reminiscent of the same rage she'd once felt for Ares. No other god or mortal had ever brought that out in her. But, Jim would have no way of knowing that. "Why? Did you think I would be angry with you?" She rose an eyebrow at him, skeptical. "Unless you, too, are older than you look, then you are certainly not responsible."

"No, but I know how much you thought of humanity. You made that _very_ clear." He shrugged, then blew air through his lips in resignation. "I dunno, I guess I just didn't want you to… be disappointed in us. We're not perfect, but… we did come out of that war and built something better."

Her breath caught in her throat. "Disappointed?" She echoed, as if the very concept was foreign to her. "No, that's…" Diana sighed, then stood to face him equally. "When I left Themyscira, I knew about the Augmentation virus. I had asked Damian to stop the project, but I thought he had it under control. I left. If I am disappointed in anyone, I'm disappointed in myself."

"You?" He balked at her. "Diana, you left because you thought you'd trained up the next generation. You can't be humanity's conscience. At some point, you had to expect we'd do the right thing."

"So, then why am I here?" She motioned to the garden around them and the station beyond. "It's not about whether or not I trust expect humanity to do the right thing. I know there is a darkness within each man. I have seen it myself. Even now, those Augment supporters. They are in the shadow of Ares. He has been dead these three hundred years and they still feed his ghost."

"Because sometimes, it's easy to get lost when you're keeping everything to yourself." He tossed his hands up in the air, both to mirror her and to express that he was at a loss as well. He pointed to his chest. "Take it from me, I should know."

"What do you mean?"

"I told you that I joined Starfleet on a dare. And that was true." Diana found that he wouldn't look her in the eye. Instead, he started to aimlessly pace the garden as he spoke. "I joined to see if I could make something of myself like my dad. And for a while, I loved it. And then… And then last year…" He sighed. "I turned one year older than my dad ever got to be. And I realized… I didn't know why I was doing any of it."

Diana tracked him as he kept pacing. "Clearly, you found a reason. You're still the captain."

"I almost wasn't. I thought I was ready to… move on. Into a senior leadership role. To give up the chair."

Diana's heart clenched in sympathy. For a moment, she found herself back on Themyscira, wondering if mankind needed Wonder Woman. She realized she had returned to that precipice. Why was she here _now_? If she had been unable to prevent another war, what could she possibly do? "But, you didn't. What changed?"

"I lost the _Enterprise_. We were attacked and marooned on a planet. There's a reason there's an A at the end of her name. She's the second _Enterprise_." Jim turned to face her. Again, she was struck by how open he was. She could tell that somewhere, in the back of his mind, he was reliving the experience. He was remembering the letters he had to write to families… "It wasn't until I lost people and my crew was held hostage that it all came together." He chuckled a bit, but she could tell he almost didn't believe what he was about to say. "In fact, the guy who marooned us was trying to destroy the Federation. He was from earth, but he'd… he was a soldier. He didn't know peace. He only knew war."

Diana stepped closer to him, both fascinated and worried. "One of your own kidnapped your crew?"

"He was like those protesters. He had been thinking one way for so long, he couldn't see the way out of the problem. He thought that conflict made humanity strong, that the Federation was weak."

"Man always finds ways to fight…" She whispered.

He shook his head. "But, see, that's what was different. Why _we_ were different. I remember saying to him… 'Better to die saving lives, than to live with taking them.' I told him that was the world I was born into, and it was the world I was going to defend."

Diana felt the air get knocked out of her as she realized how badly she'd judged herself, Conner, all of humanity. And even Jim. "You are an exceptional man."

"It's not just me, Diana." Jim managed to meet her gaze again, and for a moment, she felt flushed. He closed the last of the distance between them. "That's what we do. Starfleet's not a military organization. And part of that is because we saw the devastation of the war. We changed. We wanted to be better."

Diana had always been a woman of conviction and belief. She had held both naive and deeply profound beliefs on everything from truth to the gods to humanity. And Jim Kirk had reminded her that no matter how deeply she was shaken, her desire to love and to protect humanity, to _nurture_ them, had never wavered. "You care a great deal, more than you want people to know."

Jim smiled. A real smile. For a moment, the weight that had been on his shoulders seemed to have lifted. "I didn't always. I thought I had everything to prove and then I got out here."

"So, you plan to wander the stars forever?" Diana could certainly see the appeal, but she'd learned that about him within their first hours. She found herself caught in his orbit as he shifted from one foot to the other while he considered her question.

"I have… no idea." Jim breathed. The exact intonation, the pacing, the sense of casual ease by which he spoke, it was the exact same way that Steve had said those words to her. And yet, her heart was pounding for an entirely different reason. _He was lying._ The same phrase had been completely turned on its head. She could read Jim Kirk, and he was actually trying to lie to her.

She rose her eyebrows at him, goading him on. "Be honest. You know exactly what you want to do. You can't stand the idea of someone dragging you from that chair."

He chuckled a bit, then looked down at his hands. "You didn't slip that lasso on me or anything, did you?"

"I didn't need to." Diana reached out, resting her hand on his chest. She could feel his heart beating. "You make it very easy to know what's here. In your heart."

He had to know how close they were. She could feel his breath on her cheek as neither of them backed away. "I guess you're right. I don't want to leave my ship." She felt his fingers brush against the back of her hand rather than tear her eyes away from his. Those ocean-blue eyes of his kept pulling her towards him. "And I don't think you want to leave the _Enterprise_ , either. I think you had a taste of what being planetside was like, and you didn't like it."

"So, you think I'm best as an ambassador." She quirked an eyebrow at him.

"I think we'd be blessed to have you." Jim quickly replied, his fingers tracing up hers to gently massage here or there. "That might make me a little selfish, but I don't think any ship is going to treat you any better than the _Enterprise_."

Diana's heart was thudding in her chest, fueled by a passion she hadn't felt in years. There was no thought of the past now. Only the present, and the future that she saw before her. The potential there. She reached up to run her fingers along his jaw, tracing them over eerily familiar but still unknown lips. "What of her captain?"

"Oh, he'd treat you like an angel." His hand had slipped up to the back of her neck, cradling gently as the two of them inched ever closer. She couldn't breathe. For the first time in centuries, Diana wanted desperately to give in to that which she'd denied herself.

 _You do not allow yourself to love_ … Menalippe had told her.

Perhaps…. In this time…

A communicator beeped once. Then again.

The spell, such as it was, had been broken. Diana stepped away as Jim reached for his communicator, and she spent the next thirty seconds staring at one of the blue, whirling plants in the garden, trying to cool the flush in her cheeks.

What had she been thinking?

It must have been Steve. She always saw Steve, and perhaps, in that moment, it had been easy to forget…

"Kirk here." Jim sounded as if nothing had even remotely distracted him. By the time she turned to face him, if he had any lingering thoughts regarding what had nearly happened, he kept them completely hidden.

" _Captain, we have a problem._ " Sulu, presumably from the bridge. _"Admiral Hackett just came aboard with a security detail. He's taking Vanessa._ "

Jim's expression went stony, and he met Diana's eye, motioning for her to follow him. "We're on our way. Do _not_ let him leave the ship until I get there, Sulu. I don't care how you have to do it!"

" _Aye, sir._ "

As he flipped his communicator shut, Jim motioned to the garden exit. "Go. I'll catch up."

Diana turned and sped with the fury of the gods back to the ship.

* * *

Diana sped through the _Yorktown,_ then through the corridors of the _Enterprise_ with the ease of Hermes. She wasted no time reaching Sickbay, and only paused long enough to steel herself for whatever was occurring on the other side of the doors. She had been promised an opportunity to speak with the admirals, and instead, they had come like thieves to take her sister.

She stepped into sickbay with grace and poise, but with steel in her eyes.

"Which of you is Admiral Hackett?" She demanded, scanning the room. The area of sickbay that Vanessa had destroyed earlier was all but repaired, but still blocked off by force fields. Near her biobed, there were several men in red uniforms and one distinctly gray-suited admiral. The red bars on his shoulders told her most likely was part of the security division. It was the first time she realized that the admiral ordering Jim had most likely been the one in charge of Starfleet Intelligence.

"Well, I hope you gentlemen brought your dance card," McCoy drawled from a doorway near his office. It was clear he had been told to give them a wide berth. "Cause she might just punch it."

"Ambassador Prince." Hackett turned, his arms clasped behind his back. For a brief moment, she thought of another military official, centuries away. _That, Captain Trevor, is what soldiers do. They fight and they die._ "A pleasure to meet you, although I had hoped it would be under better circumstances."

"So did I." She replied, even-toned to a fault. She motioned to the security detail behind him. "I thought I understood how Starfleet treated victims in need of assistance, but clearly, I am mistaken."

"This isn't what you think," Hackett countered. "The security detail is actually to protect Miss Katalepis. If anyone were to see us making the transfer, the last thing we need is for the Augmenters to see her and assume the worst."

"And I wonder what exactly you think they'd assume, Admiral." McCoy made his way over to Diana, arms crossed and with a scowl on his face. "That you're kidnapping young women off of Federation starships to punch full of needles?"

Hackett's cool exterior seemed momentarily shaken as he took a step closer to the doctor. "We don't plan on hurting her, Doctor. We want to help her. And part of that means understanding the enemy."

"If your motives are so pure," Diana stormed forward, hands on her hips as she took measure of the man. "Then why the subterfuge? I requested a meeting with the Admirals. You could have explained all of this then."

"We had a breakthrough in our research." Hackett said, resolved again. She had a terrible feeling that being antagonized only made him feel more superior. "And as such, you don't have to give consent, Ambassador. Miss Katalepis does."

Diana faltered. "Excuse me?"

Hackett stepped aside, motioning to the biobed behind him. "We have what we believe to be a temporary solution for her compulsion to reach the Borg hivemind… I believe they call it a Collective."

"I'm not lettin' you stick my patient with some sort of medieval nano-cocktail." McCoy growled. Diana was inclined to agree with him. "Not until I can look at it - "

"I'm afraid you don't have the security clearance, Doctor McCoy. And at this point," Hackett motioned for one of his security detail to walk over, handing him a small medical case. Hackett opened long enough to pull a hypospray from it. "You wouldn't know what you were looking at, anyway. If it works, then Vanessa will have the freedom to accept or reject our help. If it doesn't, you can certainly still have your meeting with the Admiralty board." Hackett smiled thinly at Diana. "The last thing I want to do is hurt her. We genuinely want to assess the Borg threat and determine how we can help individuals that may fall prey to this technology. Unless,of course, Ambassador, you think you can single-handedly take down this nebulous threat that we've not seen and have no idea how to fight when it's not just an isolated individual." Diana set her jaw, seething. She could not say that if this Borg collective arrived tomorrow that she could do the same for them as she did for Vanessa. This was more than simple mother boxes and Parademons.

The doors to sickbay opened again. She turned back to see a more winded, but still fairly composed Captain Kirk.

"Admiral Hackett... " Jim said before sucking in another breath. He took a step forward, pointing to the hypo in his hand. "I hope you're not planning on dispensing unknown medication to a patient on my ship against the advice of my chief medical officer."

Hackett seemed prepared for that. It unsettled Diana even more. Even if his motives were as pure as he claimed, he had been too quick to act. "Your objections are noted and overruled." He moved to press the hypo to Vanessa's neck, and Diana sped forward. In a breath, the lasso was looped around his hand and she was blocking him from the biobed.

Both Jim and McCoy called for her, but she ignored them both.

Immediately, phasers went up around her from the security detail, but Hackett's free hand moved to stop them. "Ambassador…" He warned.

Diana shook her head, her gaze locked to his. "You must tell me the truth. Will this harm her?"

Hackett opened his mouth to reply, then paused as he glanced over at the lasso. She could feel the heat radiating from it as he tried to fight the urge to simply divulge information. "What…"

"Surely, you know of my history on earth as Wonder Woman. I have been told there is little that remains, but I would like to think it is well known that you shouldn't _lie_ to me."

From behind her, she heard McCoy mutter, "Ain't that the truth…"

Hackett huffed, nostrils flaring as he realized he'd been bested. "If it works, then she'll be able to communicate with us without the Borg programming. "

"But, will it _harm_ her?"

After another pause, he finally nodded. The truth flowed from his lips. "It could kill her. But, it's the best chance she's got."

That was all she needed. Diana took the hypospray from him, then released his hand. The lasso slipped back beneath her jacket as she looked over the device. She heard the phaser rifles lower, presumably at Hackett's order. "Doctor McCoy, please assist me in administering this."

The doctor stepped up beside her, but when he rested his hand on her arm, she could tell he wanted to dissuade her. "Sweetheart, I can do it - "

"But, you will not." Diana looked over at him. "She is my responsibility. Always."

He walked her through the steps. The right buttons to press, the way to lock the device with the right dosage, then pointed to the exposed part on her neck.

Diana couldn't bear to breathe as she rested the hypospray against Vanessa's neck. She depressed the button. The tool hissed, and then it was over.

Vanessa's eyes fluttered open after a moment. They were searching once more, but this time, when they reached Diana's face…. She smiled.

"Your highness…" She breathed. There was no tick, no compulsion to hunt and seek out technology. Just… Vanessa.

Diana was in awe. She had seen many miracles over the years, but this was different. There was no magic here. "Hello, Sister."

The woman slowly sat up, but kept her gaze firmly on Diana's face. "The voices… they're gone. But… I can still feel… _this_ …" She held her arm up. The Borg implant was still trying to click and enable various servos, but couldn't from the extensive damage. She seemed coherent, but rather like someone drugged. Nothing seemed quite real to her. "I want to go home. Can we go home?"

"I wish to take you back, sister. Desperately." Diana's hand went to her face, cradling it gently as she caressed mottled skin. The color had only barely begun to come back as McCoy and Scotty had tried some treatment with what they had. "But, you are still very injured. These Borg have done much to you."

"We'd like to help you, ma'am." Hackett's voice was an unwelcome distraction for Diana, but Vanessa turned to face him regardless. "If you'll let us."

Vanessa looked him over, then glanced over at Kirk and McCoy. She seemed so at peace. "You're from Earth." She returned her gaze, unfocused as it was, to Hackett. "NASA?"

"Something like that. We're called Starfleet now." Hackett's smile was a bit more plain. Genuine. "And I believe you've been missing for quite some time. We'd like to take care of you. We'll take you back to Earth, help undo what the Borg did." He glanced over at Diana. "But, it means leaving Ambassador Prince."

When Vanessa looked back at her sister, Diana's heart nearly broke. Her smile had completely faded, replaced by trepidation. "You don't have to go with them. You can stay here on the _Enterprise_. We have many missions, but you can come with us."

Vanessa's brow furrowed. "To space…. You're in space…" She shook her head. "No. No, I don't want to go back to space. I want to go home. I want to go to Earth." She began to shudder, more and more agitated. "Please, Diana, just let me go back to Earth. I want to see the sun, I don't want to go to space."

Diana stood straight, slowly pulling away from her sister. She was stunned. It wasn't what she thought Vanessa would want. Had she misjudged the situation? She would not be the reason her sister suffered. No matter how much she wanted to be there for her.

Clearing her throat, Diana nodded and brushed warmth from her eyes before turning to the admiral. "Then, I believe you have her permission, Admiral. But, guard her with your life. She will be vulnerable."

Jim took a step towards them. "Diana, are you sure - "

"I am." She looked over at Vanessa once more, who was beginning to look less and less aware of her surroundings. "She will be in constant fear on the _Enterprise_."

"Then, Doctor McCoy, if you could sedate her for transport, we will escort her discreetly to my ship and have her back on medical transport to Sector 001 immediately." Hackett motioned to the doctor to oblige, which he did. It was just as well. Vanessa slipped away to unconsciousness in no time.

"Take care of her." She breathed. "Guard her with your life."

As the security detail pulled their mag bed for the woman, Hackett held his hand out to Diana. It was so abrupt, she almost knocked it away. "We will. Thank you for your cooperation, Ambassador. I know it's difficult working with limited information." When Diana took his hand in return, he shook it with a firm grasp. "I promise you, I'll look out for her." Hackett turned to follow his security team, then nodded to Jim. "Captain Kirk."

When the sickbay doors closed again, Diana let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. A nervous weight settled in the top of her chest, threatening to sit there for all eternity.

"You could have told him no." Jim finally said. She noticed he'd remained over on the other side of the room. "I would have backed you."

Diana nodded, but her mind drifted back to the way Vanessa had tensed up at the very notion of remaining spacebound. "I know, Jim." She pulled herself to her full height. "But, if I do not trust Starfleet to be better, then I cannot trust them with anything or anyone at all."

She gave one last lingering look at the empty biobed.

Vanessa would find what she needed on Earth.

She had to trust them.


	14. In the Shadow of Ares: Act III

**In the Shadow of Ares: Act III**

The early morning - starship time - had come. After Vanessa Katalepis had been taken off the _Enterprise_ , Jim had done what he hoped Diana wanted: he gave her space.

He had remained with Bones in his office, talking over his best friend's justifiable concern that Hackett had access to some sort of nanotechnology before they'd even been told to bring Vanessa in. It concerned Jim, no doubt about that, but if Diana trusted Hackett's intentions, then there must have been truth in them. He had every intention of discussing it with the Commodore before the _Enterprise_ left spacedock.

When he'd voiced his unusually optimistic opinion, Bones promptly accused him of being naive, told him to get some sleep and kicked him out of Sickbay. Never mind the fact that there was _no_ chance he could sleep now. Every time he closed his eyes or had a moment of silence, he found himself thinking of Diana.

He couldn't imagine making the same decision Diana had. Then again, he had made plenty of equally difficult decisions for his crew. And there was the crux… he did what was best _for the crew_. And Diana's heart was a helluva lot bigger than his. She felt so… _openly_. He never had to wonder what she was thinking. He'd only spent a few weeks with her, but he could tell how desperately Diana wanted to help the woman. She was right. If Diana did one thing, she _loved_.

 _And you are falling at terminal velocity, Jim._ A voice that sounded suspiciously like his mother scolded him. Against his better judgement, every third thought about Diana seemed to bring him right back to the gardens on the Yorktown. The way the blue light had cast an ethereal haze over her, the way her fingers ran over his lips while he was begging - as much as Jim ever begged - for her to stay on the _Enterprise_. He had been profoundly selfish in that moment, but it had seemed right. If Sulu hadn't called….

Jim shook his head clear of the pleasant, but ultimately dangerous and distracting thoughts. If he wasn't going to sleep in his quarters, he had no point pacing in them at all. The only reason Sulu had called him was because he'd been doing his duty and looking out for the crew. Jim didn't like the idea that something - or someone - was distracting him from doing the same.

Besides, normally by this point in these kinds of… fascinations, he'd had his dalliance and left. Or she'd been transferred. _And that was years ago. When was the last time you really got swept up in someone?_ It had been far too long. Bones frequently told Jim he talked a good game, but in the last year or so, especially just before they'd lost the _Enterprise_ , Jim had withdrawn. He was still his typical charismatic self, but, there'd been no spark. And Diana wasn't a spark, she was a supernova. Every time he saw her, he couldn't stop himself. He was back to his old self and then some. And it wasn't physical attraction. It was… it was past infatuation. He was constantly in a state of awe and wonder around her. And he found himself drinking in every opportunity to be near her. Like he was… making up for lost time somehow. Which was impossible.

He needed to focus on what he did best.

Jim had just pulled his uniform shirt back on when his computer terminal chirped at his desk. He grabbed his regulation boots and took a seat at his desk before accepting the communication. The face that greeted him should have been a breath of fresh air. But, Commodore Paris's expression was knit with concern and Admiral Kent was beside her.

"Commodore Paris," Jim quickly slipped his boots on, hoping it wasn't too noticeable. "Admiral Kent. This is a surprise. What can I do for you?"

" _I wish this was a social call, Captain Kirk."_ She sounded even more troubled than she looked, and she was an evenly keeled commanding officer if he'd ever seen one. Thoughts of anything except business dropped out of his mind. _"But, events have taken place on the Yorktown that require your attention."_

Jim tried to puzzle that out, his eyes darting around the room a bit. "My attention? Specifically?"

" _The Augment protesters on the Yorktown have escalated since their encounter with yourself and Ambassador Prince."_ She and the still-silent admiral shared a dour look, then faced him again. _"They overwhelmed a security force and have stolen a ship."_

There were only three other ships in spacedock, and he rattled them off internally with ease. The _Compton,_ the _Republic_ and… Jim blurted, "The _Farragut_."

" _Yes, Captain."_ Admiral Kent spoke. _"As you might have guessed, your presence on the station agitated the protestors. Security tried to break up the protest once it was clear they were becoming violent, but they'd already gone. I think they caught wind that Ensign Chekov transferred from your ship, because the moment they realized the ship was running a skeleton crew, they used sheer numbers to get past security._ "

"Chekov's on the ship, then?" The senior officers nodded. The floor dropped out from under him. "Are they still in spacedock? We'll send a task force - "

" _They were able to get the ship out of spacedock and into open space before we could stop them."_ Paris said. _"Captain, you must retrieve the Farragut. You are the only ship as advanced as her. She is smaller and can go faster, but the hope is that your advanced sensors can track her."_

Jim nodded. "Yes, ma'am. We'll leave immediately." After a moment, Jim asked the question didn't want - but needed - to know. "Any reason to suggest the crew's still alive?"

" _Captain Garrovick was onboard at the time of the takeover. His command codes were used to override the docking control. That's no guarantee, though."_ Admiral Kent replied. _"My gut says they are. These are civilians, some with limited militia experience from back home. They're desperate. They don't know how to pilot a Federation starship, so they'd keep them alive for that, if nothing else."_ The admiral looked haggard as he finished. Not that Jim could blame him. He'd never heard of this kind of security breach to the _Yorktown_. Maybe they'd been so focused on external threats like Edison and his swarm…

"We'll bring them back." He told them both, already formulating a plan.

" _Good. And Captain, tell Ambassador Prince... "_ Kent trailed off, a hand idly playing with his beard as he chose his words. _"It's not her fault. The Augmenters were already keyed up. This isn't on her."_

Jim was careful not to say anything other than "I will, sir." But, he was sure as hell thinking it.

Of course it wasn't her fault. If anything, this was Earth's mess. She would just have to be on the ship while they cleaned it up.

" _We're sending you their last known coordinates. Good hunting._ "

He nodded once, then reached for the panel. "Understood. Kirk out." The screen went black and he caught his reflection for just a moment. He was visibly shaken, jaw set, eyes wide. Chekov was on the _Farragut_ for his ambitions. And they'd targeted the ship _because_ of Chekov and his relationship to Jim.

Chekov deserved better. That was not another letter he was going to write. Not today.

Jim rose and grabbed his communicator, flipping it open. "Kirk to the Bridge. Is everyone back on board?"

" _Affirmative, captain."_ Spock's even tone was exactly what he needed to keep him focused. _"All crew have been accounted for and reported in."_

"Good, I need everyone at yellow alert and the ship ready to leave spacedock in 15 minutes." Jim swept out of his room, heading towards the turbolift. "The _Farragut_ 's been taken hostage, and we have to get her back. I'll be on the bridge in a second, Kirk out." Without hesitation, he cut the comm and immediately opened another line. "Kirk to Ambassador Prince."

There was a momentary delay as he reached the turbolift, but her voice filtered through. _"Yes?"_

"Diana, you need to get up to the bridge. We have a situation."

" _Jim? What's happened? Is it Vanessa?"_

"No. But, I have a feeling we'll need someone who can negotiate, and you've got a few hundred years on me." He almost closed his communicator, then faltered. For a moment, he thought of Chekov shamelessly flirting with Diana, the way she'd known to get his mind off of seeing his young friend leave. He'd spent countless hours drinking and getting to know him over the last year. He had to think she would understand. "It's Chekov."

* * *

It took less than an hour to track the _Farragut_ , launch the _Enterprise_ , and race to catch up with them. The senior staff were assembled on the bridge, and it had become a waiting game. Diana had joined them shortly after she received Jim's call, but she had no opportunity to speak with him. Instead, she took up a position at the railing. If the situation had been less serious, she was sure someone would have mentioned that it had now become "her spot". She had a place to stay out of the way, but where she could have the benefit of observation.

It was just as well.

She had no idea what she would have said to Jim that could comfort him. In her opinion, that group should have never been allowed to spew their hatred. But, considering what Jim had said about the Federation, they had chosen to see the best in people and this was the exception to their rule. _A violent exception._

The entire bridge was on the razor's edge. No one spoke save their periodic updates. If the captain had made his log, it had been prior to Diana's arrival.

Even Doctor McCoy was unusually quiet as he brooded beside the chair, watching the viewport. Everyone waited for the moment that they caught up to the _Farragut_.

From Commander Spock's brief explanation of the situation to her, the Augment protesters had taken the vessel by sheer surprise. And none of them understood how the main systems work. The engines on the _Farragut_ were newer, but the _Enterprise_ had the benefit of skilled crew and enhanced sensors. If they could glean where the ship was headed, they could at least engage in an attempt at negotiation while possibly plotting a more direct course.

It turned out, that would not be a long wait once all parties were assembled.

"Captain, I believe we have identified the _Farragut_." Spock said from his console. "They have dropped out of warp outside of the Fibonan system. It is unknown as to why."

"Scotty, any theories?" Kirk asked, glancing over at his chief engineer.

Mister Scott scrutinized the details in front of him, and yet again, Diana found herself at a loss that she could not understand them the same as the rest. She would have to be patient. She did not have time to learn engineering today.

"Looks like the warp bubble collapsed. They're dead in the water. Rest of the ship's systems are up, but there's a good chance that them what took the _Farragut_ dinnae have a clue how to fly her." Scotty shifted to face the captain. "Which means there's an even better chance they forced the crew into flying it, or tried themselves. This could be an accident or intentional. But," He bobbed his head from side to side as he thought. "If it's an accident, they're lucky they didn't blow the damn core."

"Are her shields up?"

"They do not appear to be." Spock replied.

Kirk leaned forward in his chair. "Then drop out of warp ahead of her and come about. Lieutenant Uhura, hail them."

"Aye, sir." Both Sulu and Uhura chorused from their various positions. Again, the dance of the bridge picked up tempo. It was easy to forget that she had once been bound to an island, with no knowledge of such things in Man's World. When surrounded by such skill, she felt closer to her Amazons on Themyscira.

Diana could only imagine what the maneuver looked like to the outside observer. The ship came out of warp, space returning to normal on the viewport before Sulu executed the quick turnabout. The _Farragut_ came into view. In the distance, a star system she did not recognize.

"Their shields have gone up, but no weapons." Scotty said, almost amused. "Looks like they haven't managed to wheedle any security codes from the command staff."

"Yeah, well, I wouldn't bet on that." Kirk muttered. He stood, that smooth, practiced motion she could tell was as normal to him as breathing. She had been right about him. They would have to pry him out of the chair one day. The _Enterprise_ was his home, his purpose. "Uhura, anything?"

"They're not responding." Uhura turned to face the captain. "They might not be able to."

"They managed to get the engines and shields working, I'm gonna give them the benefit of the doubt that they know how to run weapons and comms, too." He grumbled. "Put me through. We'll see if they hate me enough to chat."

Diana crossed her arms over her chest and rested her finger along her jaw. It was as much an action to force her to remain silent as it was a way of keeping her heart from racing. There was no way to tell what exactly the civilian protestors would do. They had come this far. It was possible they saw no other way out.

Humans could be such fools. But, in some ways, that was why she loved them.

Desperate fools. Prone to rash, regretful action.

"Attention, unauthorized crew of the _USS Farragut_. This is Captain James T. Kirk of the Federation starship _USS Enterprise_. You have illegally commandeered another Federation vessel, and I have been authorized to ensure that you release your control of the vessel and to ensure the safety of her crew." He paused. No response. He reached up, wiping his mouth as he thought. When he spoke again, Diana nearly jumped. "If you do not respond to our hail, we will be forced to take more drastic means."

Diana opened her mouth, ready to protest that he had jumped so quickly to a threat, but paused when she caught Doctor McCoy's eye. The doctor gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head. The realization slowly dawned over her. _Of course. He's bluffing._

"But, I don't want to do that. I want to talk. I understand you blame me for what happened to Khan, but if you'd just open the line, I am more than willing to negotiate." There was still silence. Jim sighed before trying one more time. "No one needs to get hurt." He finally turned to Doctor McCoy, shaking his head, visibly frustrated.

Finally, Uhura's console flickered. "They're responding. Putting it onscreen."

The bridge of the _Farragut_ flickered to life on the viewscreen. Diana's heart dropped to her stomach as she recognized the face of the man who had led the protests on the station and several of his cohorts. They had taken up positions around the smaller bridge, but that only made them look more menacing. Somehow, the fewer numbers seemed all that more threatening.

Many of them were manning stations, phasers in hand.

However, there were a few notable exceptions. The young man in the engineering station wore red now, instead of gold, but it was impossible not to recognize the curly mop of hair. His left eye was visibly swollen, but to his credit, Chekov didn't seem beaten. He seemed angry.

"Chekov." Jim breathed. Diana could see his shoulders tense, and his right hand balled into a fist at his side. "Chekov, talk to me."

"Your pitiful crewmember isn't going to speak to you, captain." The lead protestor stepped forward, shifting the phaser rifle so that it was pointing directly at the ensign's head. "He's too weak to stand up to us. To me."

"And who are you, exactly?"

"Jason Tambor. Not that it matters to you, Kirk. You never bothered to understand Khan, you only wanted to lock him away."

Diana gripped the railing, careful not to let her strength get the best of her. This was so _foolish_. What could they possibly hope to accomplish by hurting Chekov?

"So, what? You steal the ship that you don't know how to fly because you're mad at me, and…" Jim motioned to Chekov. "You asked him _nicely_ to fix your mess with the warp core. He's decided he won't be doing that because he's a Federation officer." Jim crossed his arms over his chest. "He's doing his job. You're civilians, but you just turned yourselves into criminals."

"We're not criminals. We're the only ones who care about the future of the human race." The man growled. The sound seemed more threatening over the slightly tinny, processed comm signal.

"Right." Jim nodded, clearly skeptical. "And I'm sure a big part of that involves the 'purity' of the human race and the 'natural evolution' through Augmentation. I'm pretty sure we all heard the pitch before, and it ended terribly the first time. You're not going to change anyone's minds with this stunt."

"You have no idea what you're talking about!" Tambor stepped forward. "Khan promised us life! Power! He saved my niece! She was dying from a terminal illness, and the Federation was content to let her languish until she was a _husk_. And your Vulcan took that away from us!" He jabbed a finger towards Spock, who simply quirked an eyebrow. Diana did not know the particulars, but she had a feeling it wouldn't help. "And what's worse is that you have them in your Starfleet. You call me a criminal, but you have a bodyguard who's clearly augmented unlike anything Khan ever predicted!"

Diana's eyes widened. Of course. When she had realized that Jim was going to be attacked by a mob, she'd pulled him from the sea of people and soared off to confront Conner. At no point had she considered the effect that may have had on them. They saw her as an Augment.

They could not be further from the truth. Yet, their actions now had the proper color to them. These were not desperate individuals who felt trapped - they felt privileged and betrayed. They saw Augmentation as a game of Haves and Have Nots. Khan had been careful only to show them what they _wished_ to see. They knew nothing of the mania that the virus caused.

"That's not… she's not - " Kirk huffed, trying to think. "You have no idea how dangerous Khan is. He's crazy - "

"He is _superior_! Superior ability breeds superior ambition. He understood this. _We_ understand it."

The statement sent a chill through Diana, resonating deeply. In her bones.

Damian had said the exact same words when she had asked him what he was trying to accomplish with the Augment Project.

 _I'm creating the future, Miss Prince. My father never had the ambition to see beyond Gotham. I do. And superior ability leads to superior ambition. The League will be so much more than you ever thought it could be._

Damian Wayne. The son of a vigilante philanthropist and a twisted cult of assassins. His ambition and misguided intentions left a mark, that was for certain. It was a twisted, angry scar across humanity..

Jason continued. "So, you tell us where you've taken Khan and return him to us, or we will kill every member of this crew. Starting with him." He stalked back over to Chekov.

To his credit, the young man remained steady, glancing up at Jim through one swollen eye. "Don't give him anysing, keyptin." Tambor jammed the phaser against his temple and the crew visibly tensed.

"Do not doubt my intentions, Captain Kirk. You have 15 minutes." Tambor threatened, dark and lethal. Diana knew that darkness. She knew it all too well.

The viewscreen cut out, replaced by a starscape and the drifting _Farragut_.

"Dammit!" Jim spun, smacking the back of his chair in anger as he stalked towards Uhura. "Hail them again!"

The communications officer tried, but she shook her head. "They're ignoring us now."

"Jim, they're gonna kill the kid if we don't stop them!" McCoy voiced the concern all of them had with a gesture towards the ship on screen.

"I know that, Bones!" The captain scowled. "But, I can't just fire on them."

Diana stepped down onto the bridge as Spock did the same. Within moments, the three men had convened in the center of the bridge, intent on devising a plan.

"His loyalty to Khan conveys a more personal relationship than simple fanatic." Spock remarked.

"Hell, Spock, this guy's madder than a hatter." Bones scoffed. "Thinkin' he's got a personal connection with his cult leader is the _definition_ of a fanatic. For all we know, he never even met the guy and he's just spouting this junk because he sees all aliens as a threat."

"Well, he's not gonna talk to us." Sulu offered from the conn. "If we can't talk to him, we can't reason with him."

"Is there _any_ way we can get on that ship? Or disable it from here?" Kirk turned his attention to Engineer Scott.

"No! Well, maybe." Scotty sighed, clearly mulling over the possibilities. "If I can reach Starfleet Command, they can send me command codes to override the shields. Maybe we could beam a small team onboard. But, that'd take hours."

"Nothing in Tambor's body language suggested he was bluffing." Uhura chimed in from her seat. Diana was inclined to agree.

Her stomach rolled. This was not the way, and she could tell. But, as Sulu had mentioned, if they would not respond to Kirk because of his role in Khan's demise…

"What happened to Khan?" Diana's voice cut through the murmurs.

The cluster turned to look at her. Jim's jaw had gone a bit slack, as if trying to determine what to say. "It's… kind of long story." He said, non-committal.

"Then make it brief. I know who Khan was. I knew the man who gave him those Augmentations. Damian Wayne. The son of a man known as Bruce Wayne." She didn't give an inch to Jim. She stared him down, one hawk to another. "The man who brought the Justice League together. They called Bruce The Batman. And he was fiercely ambitious. When he died, the world was never the same. And Damian tried to fill that void by creating more superpowered people."

"Right, Augmentation was a corporate initiative for an old terrestrial defense force," Jim replied. The pieces were falling into place before his eyes. "You're telling me that Khan knew this guy and willingly allied himself with superheroes?"

"Damian was not his father." Diana's heart sank as she tried to push thoughts of the young - now gone - man away. "He believed - he _gave_ Khan his axiom: Superior ability leads to superior ambition. Jim, I know Khan and the motives of his project more intimately than any of you could."

"I understand that - "

"What I do not know is why they are so obsessed with him 200 years later. Why are they convinced he helped them? Clearly, he blames you and the Enterprise. But, how could they be so enamored with a man who had been in stasis for centuries?" Diana's questions spilled in a rush, one after another, but each one of them was still measured and required an answer. Yet again, she struggled to understand humanity after she had left.

Jim looked pained, with recollection or with the difficulty of making a complex matter brief, Diana could not tell. "Two years ago a rogue Starfleet Admiral took Khan out of stasis. This admiral thought we would go to war with the Klingon Empire and thought Khan would be perfect for Starfleet's army. But Khan turned on him, started recruiting people under the name John Harrison."

"He started recruiting a cult. Promising people cures to terrible illnesses if they took out specific Starfleet operations." Bones cut in. "Turns out Khan didn't appreciate Admiral Marcus keeping the other augments in cryo-stasis"

"A lot more happened that day, but in the end we were able to take Khan into custody, alive. He was placed back into stasis and he and his other augments were sent to a far colony world. None of us know where exactly." The tone of Kirk's voice was enough to chill Diana. _What had happened?_

"Based on his reverence, it would be safe to assume Tambor is one of John Harrison's acolytes." Spock interjected. "If so, he would think of Khan as someone who helped him directly. However we lack the time to verify this."

"But, it means you genuinely don't know where Khan is." Diana turned towards the viewscreen, brow furrowed. "You would not be able to give them the answer they seek because you simply don't have it."

"And I'm not risking Chekov's life by trying any sort of direct assault." Kirk said. It was if discussing Khan's impact on the crew, even in minimal terms, had strengthened his resolve.

"You don't need an assault, you need a negotiation." She turned to face them all. "Give me a shuttle and I'll meet them: alone. I will need a crewman to pilot it, of course, but they can remain on the shuttle. I will make Tambor see reason."

McCoy nearly exploded. "Are you outta your damn mind? You want to go in there alone? I don't care if you can twist a support beam with your bare hands, that's still suicide!"

Diana wouldn't budge. "Doctor, this is what I am meant to do. I am an Amazon, I was raised to temper anger so that cooler heads would prevail. I have been doing this longer than you have been alive. Besides," She quirked an eyebrow in defiance. "They think I am an Augment. And I knew Khan. That alone means I can use that to parlay."

"Sweetheart, you mighta known Khan, but so did they. And he was so nuts by the time we caught up with him, he crashed a goddamn starship into San Francisco. He leveled blocks, nearly took out Starfleet command! Countless people were killed! And they worship him!"

"The first step in dismantling a god is to make his people understand he does not love them, Doctor." Diana kept her tone level, but that cold knot in her stomach turned even colder. "They called me the god-killer once. I don't need a sword to do that." She turned to Jim. "You must let me speak to them. If you don't, then they will continue to fester their resentment towards you and it will cost the lives of the crew. On _both_ ships."

"Diana… This is an incredible risk." Kirk softened. She could hear the subtle shift from captain to friend. "Even if I authorize it, there's no guarantee they'll talk to you."

"I believe they will." She stated. "And I believe that you will find a way to get onto the ship should my negotiations take longer than expected. But, I am an ambassador of the Federation, this is exactly what they want to hear. You asked me to be here because of my skills. It _has_ to be me."

Jim took a deep breath, his eyes on hers for almost too long. Finally, he broke away and nodded. "Okay. Go. We'll keep working here."

Diana made her way to the turbolift, determined and already considering what she would say.

"Lieutenant Uhura, get Mister Scott on the line with Starfleet Command, let's see if we can get the command codes and frequencies needed to disable the _Farragut_ from here." Kirk was already making his way to the comms officer, but he cast one last glance over at Diana as the turbolift arrived. "And Miss Prince: Do me a favor and leave the armor at home. There's no telling what might set them off." When she didn't reply, he stood straight. "I mean it. _Please_."

As Diana boarded the shuttle and took off a few minutes later, she adjusted the ambassadorial jacket and Federation pin on her shoulder. And she checked to make sure her lasso was still securely underneath it.


	15. In the Shadow of Ares: Act IV

**In The Shadow of Ares: Act IV**

"Ambassador, we've reached the _Farragut_ , but they've not responded to my hails." The crewman said, worry etched onto his young features.

Diana approached him from the back of the shuttle, looking out the viewport. As she caught his concerned reflection in the glass, she reached out and rested a hand on his shoulder, squeezing gently. "Thank you, Crewman Oviedo. I imagine they're concerned that I am the Captain, not an ambassador. Please open a channel. I'd like to speak to them myself." She released his shoulder with another gentle squeeze, hoping she could allay his fears.

The crewman either knew better than to argue with her, or didn't have the confidence to voice his concern with a Federation ambassador. He tapped a few buttons, ones that Diana had quickly associated with the communications array on shuttles and in deck-to-deck transmission. "Channel open, ma'am."

She took a deep breath and moved to rest her hand on the open co-pilot chair. "Mister Tambor, I am Ambassador Diana Prince. I am offering to speak with you in the hopes that we can resolve this conflict peacefully. You do not know my name, but I can assure you, you know my face. We met yesterday when you attempted to assault a bystander. I believe you called me an Augment. If you would allow me to speak with you, I am sure that you will find interest in what I have to say."

The shuttle felt utterly motionless, but given the way the _Farragut_ gently drifted to her left, she knew they must have been moving. A perfect metaphor for negotiation. One spoke in the hopes that in the silence between words, a bargain could be struck.

" _Lower your shields and we'll tractor your vessel in. Only you will be allowed on board. If anyone else tries to get off that shuttle, we won't hesitate to kill them._ " She might not have been able to see Jason Tambor, but she could tell from the change to his tone that he had taken the bait. He was intrigued.

"Of course." She said calmly, then nodded to the crewman. He looked up at her with wide eyes, but she simply motioned to the console. After a moment of hesitation, the crewman dropped the shields.

The small vessel shuddered and groaned. Diana gripped the back of the seat, neck craning as she tried to see what precisely had happened. After a moment, she caught the blue haze of what must have been the tractor… well, beam. The _Farragut_ started to move closer.

"Before we dock, send a message to Captain Kirk." Diana muttered. She didn't need to keep her voice low, but she had dropped into a natural state of subterfuge. It made no difference if she was scouting a warehouse or pursuing prey in Artemis's Glade: she was now in the belly of the beast. Best to treat it with proper solemnity. "Let him know we're going aboard. I am sure they will confiscate my communicator once I am on, and they will force the shuttle to stay depowered."

"Yes, ma'am." The crewman's fingers flew over the console as he quickly typed the message. The menu system flashed in red that it had been sent. It was just as well. The moment they passed under the _Farragut's_ dish, the console flickered. "They're overriding our controls."

"Is it intentional?"

"I don't think so. Most ships have an automated docking sequence." Oviedo shrugged as his red shirt turned an unpleasant shade of purple under the blue lighting of the docking bay. "Still, I'd be on guard, ma'am."

She smiled at him, touched by his concern. It was a good reminder as to why she found herself constantly pulled back into humanity's orbit. Even the least of them had potential to be full of love and kindness, even for strangers.

She would do her best to answer Tambor's ignorance with that same love.

* * *

Diana had spent time on the _Farragut._ In the few weeks that she had spent on the _Enterprise_ , they had briefly rendezvoused with the ship and exchanged crew. She'd taken the tour and she had even come to the docking bay. From speaking with Chief Engineer Scott over coffee, he'd explained that each Starfleet ship would seem eerily familiar on the inside: They all shared similar blueprints that only shifted based on an individual vessel's needs.

Unfortunately, that particular academia did not help her now. As she stepped out of the shuttle to face Tambor and a handful of his group, the _Farragut_ felt like a whole new realm. Nevertheless, she hoped that would be a point she could use to her advantage. Tambor didn't know the ship that well, either.

"Stop." Tambor leveled his rifle at her, eyes raking over her. This was the first time either of them truly had had an opportunity to see one another. Tambor's eyes were dark and troubled, and his black hair had seen better days. He was haggard. She got the impression that even though he seemed impeccably dressed and confident on the _Yorktown_ , the crew of the _Farragut_ had given him more trouble than he expected. "Check her for weapons."

"That is not necessary." Diana said smoothly, holding her hands up in surrender. She cast her eyes around the room, gauging the moods and fortitudes of the rest of the group. They seemed to be holding up well, but a few of them were already restless. "I have a ceremonial lasso of my people underneath my jacket, but I can assure you that it will not be used if you truly wish to hold these negotiations in the spirit of truth. You will not be taking it from me." The last point she made directly to the civilian who approached her, intent on searching her for weapons. The blonde woman took a step back, then looked to her leader in confusion.

If Jason was distrusting of her, he was seemingly willing to set that aside for the benefit he perceived in gaining the allegiance of an Augment. "How do I know I can trust you?"

"I will be honest with you, as I have been thus far." Diana slowly reached for her jacket, unzipping it with care. The phaser rifles around her never lowered, but they didn't seem too keen to fire on her, either. Once her jacket was unzipped, she held it open so they could see her gold belt with lasso hook against the standard issue black shirt. She also had her communicator tucked into the belt. The moment Tambor caught that, he snapped his fingers and motioned to the blonde again.

"Take her communicator." As she complied, Tambor stalked forward. Presumably, he thought he could intimidate her. "And you better not try anything stupid. I'll kill the whole crew of this tub if I have to."

Diana smirked. "You saw what I could do on the station. Do you really think threatening me will get you anywhere?" She zipped her jacket back up. "I came here to talk, because I think you will listen to what I have to say. But first, I'd like to see Ensign Chekov."

Jason scoffed. "No."

Diana took her own step forward, arching an eyebrow. " _Yes_. Because until I see him, we will not speak of Khan Noonian Singh and the future he promised you."

Tambor's eyes went wide. Her tone and implication had struck precisely where she meant for it to. Without speaking, he nodded and turned, waving for the group to move out. They marched with enough purpose to suggest that some of them might have spent time in armed forces, but as Diana understood it, that would have been a short amount of time. Starfleet was not a military organization, so planetside defense would have been seen as saber-rattling after a certain point.

She didn't speak as they made their way to the bridge. Even when everyone crammed onto the turbolift, she swallowed the nervous lump in her throat and kept her thoughts focused on the task at hand. She knew she could have subdued several of them, but she could not guarantee the safety of the _Farragut_ crew. And she had promised Jim that she had the solution. _A promise is unbreakable._ She could hear the youthful, coy words rolling off her tongue to another man, in another life. She would not disappoint the man who seemed to be both his ghost and his equal.

Upon arriving on the bridge, Diana made a direct line to the young man at the engineering station. "Pavel," She breathed as he turned to look at her.

"Ambassador," He smiled, even as his swollen eye must have made the expression painful. "Vat are you doing here? I sought - "

"I'm going to take care of Tambor and his people. Just be strong, as I know you have been." Diana smiled, gently resting her hands on either side of his face. It was an action her mother had done countless times. It was one she had shared with many Amazons to comfort them. Today, she hoped it gave Pavel the same.

"You've seen him." Jason growled behind her. "Now, you said you had information on Khan. You nearly killed me on the station, so why should I believe you care about us at all?"

Diana's smile faded. She slowly rose to her full height, then turned back to face the man who had been responsible for Chekov's injury. _But, not for his mania. That is Khan's doing._ "You assaulted an innocent woman. I defended her, as I did the captain when your mob descended upon him."

"She was a race-traitor." His words came out in the same ignorant snarl she had heard from countless men and women in Man's World. "Her parents chose to dilute the purity of the human race with inferior species - "

"Who are you to make the call that a species is inferior?" Diana challenged. "That was never Khan's crusade. That is your own."

"Khan saved all of us when aliens didn't care!" The blonde woman who had seemed so meek before blurted out the statement with such conviction and passion, Diana was caught off-guard. She had seemed a sensitive soul. Perhaps not. "My daughter would have died on Earth. The Vulcan doctors who came didn't even try to help her. They already thought she was a lost cause."

Diana shook her head. "Sister, you cannot blame all other species on the actions of a few. To do so would mean judging all of humanity by the worst of us."

"What do you know?" Another one of them scoffed. He looked about the same age as Chekov, but twice as fierce. "You're an Augment, you've already been blessed with the gift and Starfleet keeps you secret."

Diana sighed. "I am no Augment."

Tambor was stunned. "You're not? But, we saw what you did - "

"When have you ever seen an Augmented individual _fly_?" Diana asked.

His mouth worked for a moment before he finally managed, "But, there's been time. Khan could have - "

"Khan does not care about you. In fact, he cares about you less than the Vulcans you belittle." Diana could sense the tension in the room ramping up around her, but she pressed on. "Listen to me. I know that you _think_ you know him, but you only know what he has wished for you to see. I knew Khan before he was an Augment."

"How?" The blonde again.

"Because like a Vulcan or Andorian or Romulan, I am simply not human. I am not an Augmented individual, I was given these abilities through my bloodline." Before they could interrupt her, she continued on, watching each of them as she spoke. She had to trust that at least one of them would listen to her. "I protected humanity before the Eugenics War. And when I knew Khan, he only cared about the power that he could gain. He was so dangerous after the Augmentation, we knew he could not be trusted."

"You're lying!" Tambor yelled, bringing up the phaser rifle.

Unflinching, Diana simply held her hands up to dissuade him. "I'm not. I love humanity with all my heart. There is a darkness and a light within each of you. Khan believed that humanity could never conquer that darkness: that you were never _enough._ But, I do not believe that. I believe that the light within each of you is _always_ enough. You only have to be willing to love and to accept others." Diana glanced over at the blonde, stepping over towards her. "What does Augmentation mean to you? Abilities? Power?" She tilted her head. "Immortality? Were you to have children with Vulcans, those children would have longer lifespans and be immune to other diseases. Were you to have children with Klingons, those children would be strong and powerful.

"But, you _shun_ people who have married other species for dilution without considering the possibility that part of your great evolution as a species was to sit at the same table as those who have been travelling the stars for centuries before you." Vanessa came to mind. Her sister who had travelled so far for humanity's progress and they would never know her sacrifice. "Humans have accomplished marvels without augmentation. You insult the memories of your ancestors by forgetting that they laid the steps you now walk towards the stars.

"And before you tell me that you think Khan cares about you, that he would say you are doing this for the greater good of humanity, you think about what he did in San Francisco!" The group was silent. It took her a moment to realize that her eyes had grown misty, but she continued on, emboldened and passionate.

"Khan did not think about _you_ or your children or your families when he crashed a starship into the city. He would have killed any non-augmented human, he would have killed every _Augment_ , including himself! I don't even know if _I_ could have survived that kind of an explosion. And he didn't do it for you: he did it because he was so consumed with revenge and anger that he would have watched the world burn around him so he could be king of the ashes!" Diana gasped to fill her lungs before continuing, praying that they heard her, if not in their minds, in their hearts.

"You must understand, what Khan wishes for you is not a path you wish to take. You are all civilians. You never went to Starfleet, you never had to serve in a war. You never had to understand the burden of what you do. Khan knows it. I know it. There is a price to pay for this Augmentation, for this immortality." Diana clenched her hands into fists. "My… species is very long lived. I have seen centuries come and go and I can tell you that immortality is not something you strive for."

Tambor opened his mouth but she dismissed him with a wave of her hand. Damien's quest for immortality, to create a legacy worthy of Bruce had nearly undone it all. For a gift that was more of a curse. Lois would have laughed at all of them.

"You lose. Every time. There is a list that you must keep, you see. The list of those you have lost. The faces that haunt you before you sleep, the faces that you could not save or the eyes whose light you took. Whatever you _think_ you will accomplish here will not outweigh that list." She swallowed. "I have one. Would you like to hear it?" Diana turned her attention to the blonde in the corner. She was clutching her phaser rifle, but almost as if a comfort, not as a weapon. "Antiope. She was the first to die for me. And then there was Steven Rockwell Trevor. Then, Etta Candy, Charlie, Samir, Chief, _Bruce Wayne_ , and…" She swallowed. "And Lois Lane. And many of them were taken from age, but _so many_ of them were taken by other people who believed that they, too, deserved something over someone else."

Diana refused to take her eyes off of the woman. "Sister, you do not want the name Pavel Chekov in your mind at night. You do not want to remember his face, and you do not want to visit the curse of violence on his loved ones." The woman's lip had begun to quiver. "I understand your suffering for your daughter. Would you _ever_ wish that kind of pain on someone else?" She finally tore her gaze away to face Jason Tambor. He seemed thunderstruck. "In earth's ancient history, the name Jason belonged to a hero. A man who went to great lengths - a mere mortal - but let his pride and his greed doom him in the end. Is that the legacy you wish to leave? For a man who has manipulated you? For a man who simply thinks _you,_ Jason Tambor, will _never_ be enough?"

Tambor brought his phaser high to aim. Diana's breath caught in her throat. The moment stretched as she wondered if he would fire.

"It takes nothing to be hateful," She said softly, bringing her hand up to gently wrap around the muzzle of the phaser. Diana didn't need the lasso to see the truth in this man. It was as natural as breathing to see the truth in humanity most days. She was a goddess whose sole passion was for truth. Tambor had shown his heart without so much as a word. "But, it takes great courage to admit that you were wrong because you were afraid."

His hands were shaking. He couldn't have lined up a shot if he wanted to. He grit his teeth, desperately trying to fire, but it was plain that he had lost the nerve to.

"You do not have to go down this path." Diana said, hoping to coax the weapon free.

Finally, he wrenched the rifle away and threw the weapon to the floor in front of him. Around her, Diana could hear phaser rifles dropping like raindrops on a tin roof.

"Mister Chekov, if you could drop the shields, I believe the captain would like to see you for himself." Diana finally muttered, eyes still on Tambor.

"Yes, ambassador." Chekov's reply was muffled, but clearly relieved.

As the console chirped behind her from Chekov's commands, she took a step closer to Jason, crouching down to grab the rifle. He didn't stop her, but he backpedaled regardless. "I don't want to hurt you." She said softly, trying to close the distance again.

He simply stared at the floor, sullen.

A moment later, she heard the sound of transporter beams all over the bridge. When she turned, she caught sight of several security guards in red. At the front of them, to no one's surprise, was Captain James T. Kirk.

As soon as they finished materializing, the captain turned his phaser towards Jason Tambor, jaw set. "Mister Tambor. I think it's time you stand down."

* * *

Bringing in Jason Tambor and the rest of the civilian protesters had been… surprisingly easy. At least, from Jim's perspective. He had managed to get a brief, somewhat overblown account from Chekov before the _Farragut's_ CMO decided he needed to treat his engineer, so he knew she'd said _something_ to them about the cost of being immortal and how much Khan didn't care about them.

Once he'd secured them in the brig and set course for the _Yorktown_ to turn them back over, Jim had made his last captain's log on the matter and withdrew to the observation lounge. It had become a habit.

He shouldn't have been surprised when Bones came in a few minutes after he'd poured a glass of scotch.

"You know, you probably shouldn't self-medicate." Bones took the bottle, looked at it, and poured himself a glass, "But who am I to judge. Hell of a day..."

Jim chuckled ruefully, then took a swig. He waited until the scotch finished burning down his throat before he glanced over at him. "I take it Doctor Talas kept you busy on her sickbay. Guess you've never had to keep up with an Andorian before."

"I can handle an Andorian." Bones' tone indicated Jim had hit close to the mark. "Chekov is fine, by the way. You'd barely know he'd been held hostage by an insurgent group today. He asked me to leave the shiner so he could impress 'ze ladies'. I said that sounded like something you'd do and he puffed up faster than a Gorn in the midst of a mating dance."

That got an honest laugh of Jim. "That kid doesn't know what's good for him." He shook his head, the mirth slipping from his expression as soon as it appeared. He cleared his throat, staring down at his glass as if it could provide him answers. "It's good he's over there. He needs to strike out on his own, have a career that doesn't involve me. That nearly got him killed today."

Bones reached over and put a hand on Jim's wrist, pushing the glass back to the table and catching his attention, "This wasn't on you, Jim. You didn't ask or taunt those loonies to take the _Farragut_. If they'd taken the _Enterprise_ ," He shrugged. "Well, then, I suppose you could take _some_ of the blame, but Chekov wasn't in danger today because you put him there. He was in danger because, well, he's Starfleet an' this job isn't exactly kittens and caution. Although, I don't imagine he'll live that down any time soon. First day onboard and he gets held hostage."

He was right. Jim knew it, Bones knew it. It didn't help untangle that knot in his stomach, though. "No, but they saw me and they latched right on. If Diana hadn't been here..." He exhaled and scrubbed his face with his free hand before another thought struck him. "I mean, what did she say to them? Chekov wasn't making a whole lot of sense when I saw him. Did he say anything to you?"

Bones took a long breath, measuring his words, "From what I could get out of Chekov; she gave a long speech about how augmentation isn't improving humanity, it's ignoring how great humanity already is. And that attacking people for having kids with other species isn't protecting earth's purity, it's xenophobia and hypocritical. After all, a half Vulcan kid is going to be stronger and faster than a normal human, on par with an augment, so isn't that the same as augmentation."

He paused to take a sip of his bourbon, enjoying the burn before continuing, "Then Chekov said she went into how being immortal like what Khan promised them was no blessing... she started listing off all the people in her life she's lost because they just... grew old and died. And she didn't."

The surprise on Jim's face was plain. "Holy shit." He breathed. "Well, I guess that's one way to do it..."

"Kid said it was like listening to you when you give your big rallying speeches." Bones' smile was a dry one, and there was a very familiar teasing mirth in his eyes, "That he'd have followed her to hell and back, done anything she asked."

Jim grinned before he could stop himself. "Yeah, well, I read her records. You need to stop an asteroid, you called Superman. You need to stop a war, you called Wonder Woman." He shrugged and polished off his drink. "She just… has that effect on people." Chekov was starry-eyed around pretty women, but everyone knew there was something more to Diana. It wasn't just the regal nature, either. It was how much she cared. At least, for Jim it was.

"Effect on a lot of people, or just you, Jim?" Bones topped off both their glasses. "Because I've seen you mope about a girl before, but this is pretty prolonged."

"What?" He scoffed, shrugging it off in a lame attempt to avoid talking about what had plagued him for the last weeks. "No, that's... she's not... that's not what this is. I mean, she's clearly an accomplished diplomat or Admiral Kent never would have made her an ambassador. That's all I'm saying."

The dry smile was back on Bones' lips. Jim briefly debated throwing his bourbon into his face. "Horseshit. You've been starry eyed for her since you first brought her on board."

"She saved my life, she's the queen of the Amazons!" Jim protested with a fervent hiss. "She's _Wonder Woman_ , Bones, a bona fide superhero from history and she is easily the most impressive hand-to-hand combatant I've ever met. She has the biggest heart I've ever seen. I mean, think about what she did for Vanessa. Trusting Hackett? She saw something that was enough to trust him. She'd _just_ met the guy." The more he tried to extol her virtues, the more obnoxious the grin on his best friend's face became. "I can see how this might not be helping my case, but you get my point. She is pretty much a god walking among mortals. I'm just happy she picked my ship." Jim realized no sooner than the words left his mouth he'd been caught. And it wasn't as if lying to Bones would get him anywhere. "So, okay, yes, I'm interested. Doesn't mean I'm going to do anything about it."

"Good," Bones said, capping the bottle to keep them from a third glass, "Because if she's that good? She's out of your league."

Jim bristled, shooting him an annoyed look. "Thanks, Bones." He said, sarcasm dripping from his voice. "You know, it's a wonder you're divorced with that romantic soul of yours..."

Bones only had time to furrow his brow at him before the doors to the observation lounge opened behind them with a hiss.

Jim quickly turned in his seat and immediately found himself wishing Bones had not capped that bottle. "Ambassador Prince..." He said, forcing the formality so that - with luck - Bones wouldn't press the issue further.

It didn't work. No sooner than she walked closer, she pulled her jacket off and took a seat beside him on the stool. "Jim. Doctor McCoy." Her smile towards Bones lit up the dark room enough that Jim quickly covered his grimace with another swig of bourbon.

To make it worse, Bones leaned forward with an easy smile. "You know, sweetheart, you can feel free to call me Leonard any day. We're off-duty."

Jim set his glass down with purpose and cleared his throat. "Hey, Bones, didn't you have supplies to finish cataloguing before we get back to the _Yorktown?_ I don't know when our next supply run will be."

All Southern charm, Bones simply chuckled and pushed off of the bar. "My work is never done."

"No, you don't have to go." Diana said with a smile. She'd only been there a few weeks, but it felt like she had always belonged. "I'm sure you have more stories to tell me, Doctor."

"Oh, I've got plenty, but I'm sure Jim can think of a few." Bones came around the bar and clapped Jim on the back with more force than was probably necessary. "Just do me a favor. I've cut him off for the night, so try not to let him get into any more trouble."

As his chief medical officer sauntered out, Jim casually called: "You're fired, Bones."

"You say that every week…" The doors shut behind him. Jim found himself - yet again - in the observation lounge, alone with Diana. Considering how quickly he'd tried to dive headfirst into trouble last time they were alone, he had a feeling this wasn't going to improve his track record.

"I get the impression I interrupted something," Diana said as she turned to face him. She seemed relaxed. The dim lighting over the bar only served to cast her in that same type of ethereal glow she'd been in at the gardens. She wasn't skittish around him - not that he could recall her ever really being skittish - so he had to assume they were going to… not talk about the gardens.

 _Dammit, Bones…_ Jim thought as he found himself completely unable to _stop_ thinking about wanting to lean forward and kiss her. It was a terrible idea, but he wanted to finish what he'd started. This was weeks longer than he used to have patience for.

But, he also didn't want to risk the growing friendship. It was… _important_ that he didn't just throw himself forward. He just wished he knew why.

"You didn't." He finally spoke, suddenly aware that he must have been staring. Or maybe he'd just taken too long to answer. "We were catching up. Bones filled me in on how Chekov's doing, and the _Farragut's_ on its way now, so… we're good." He picked up the now empty glass. "And apparently I've been cut off."

Diana chuckled, then reached for the bottle of bourbon herself. He watched as she opened it with ease and poured them both another few fingers of the amber liquid. "Well, as a former queen, I can tell you with certainty that sometimes, it pays to ignore the medical advice."

He grinned boyishly. "That sounds like there's a story involved."

She returned the smile. "Several. I've been known to push myself well beyond the limits of what my friends and doctors would tell me." She held the glass up to clink the rim against his in cheers. He obliged and the two of them shared a swig. "But, heroes do not think of themselves in the moment - only of the world they wish to save. Sometimes, we inherently know that we are the only ones who can take the risk and that it _must_ be done."

Jim's grin faded as his mind drifted back to a warp core long gone, to the burning itch of radiation as he gripped a metal rail tightly and kicked the dilithium chamber back into alignment. His breath growing shorter…. The world growing dimmer….

Jim took another drink. "Yeah, I know that feeling. It always seems like a good idea at the time."

Diana caught his eye, even as he tried to keep his gaze glued to the bar counter. She had a way of pulling his attention from anywhere and anything _right_ to her. "Jim… you are not an easily rattled man. I've seen you stare down Romulan warbirds, centurions…. A Borg. Yet, I saw something in you today I've not seen before." She set her glass down. "The mention of Khan unsettles you. You were less sure of yourself today."

Jim looked up at her through the stray strands of blonde in his eyes. He could feel his resolve crumbling. He didn't like to keep secrets. He was an open book. He liked it that way. It kept things simple. _She's the opposite of simple, Jim_ … "I have history with him." He finally replied, hoping to dissuade her.

"I read the official report." Diana remarked. "And it says you were severely injured when Khan damaged the _Enterprise._ Interestingly enough, I cannot see your medical records." She smirked. "I lack the clearance."

"Yeah, it wasn't pretty." He leaned back a bit, resting against the bar counter on one elbow. The bourbon had lost its appeal. He wasn't entirely sure he even needed its ability to loosen his tongue. The longer she looked at him, the more he wanted to just… let it out. "The truth is… Khan is probably one of the worst people I have ever met. And I had to ally myself with him to stop Admiral Marcus from starting a war. Then, to no one's surprise, the moment Khan had the more powerful ship, he attacked the _Enterprise_." She opened her mouth to speak, but he held a hand up to stop her. "We had the rest of the Augments on board in stasis. In trying to get them back, he severely damaged the _Enterprise_ and we were caught in Earth's gravity _._ The only way to get the ship flying was to realign the warp core."

"How does one do that?" She asked, brow furrowed.

"In this case, manually." Every second leading up to that decision was still crystal clear in his mind. "Scotty told me the chamber was flooded with radiation. If anyone went in there, they were dead." He shrugged. "So, I knocked him out, put him in his jump seat, and I went in there. I kicked the damn core back into place."

Diana's eyes went wide, haunted. It actually stunned Jim to see that she was close to crying. "You sacrificed yourself for the ship."

After a long moment, he nodded. "Yeah. And I'd do it again if I had to. I died. I _remember_ dying. It's the damndest thing."

Diana's glass trembled in her hand. Jim felt his heart sink as he realized that she was taking the tale to heart. "How are you alive?" The question seemed to somehow have meaning for her. He couldn't tell why.

"Khan's blood." He said. "Spock chased him down. He would've killed him if Bones hadn't realized that Khan's restorative powers extended beyond just injury… it could bring creatures back to life." The look on her face seemed to make his heart clench in _exactly_ the kind of way that he did not want it to. He knew it had to have been Bones reminding him about how close he'd come to acting on a base attraction. But… maybe, it wasn't just infatuation. She'd only known him a few weeks, but here she was, as upset as if Kal had told her all this. Maybe even more. Maybe, there _was_ something there. "See, I owe him my life as much as I owe him for my death. But, I'm here. I made it."

"And, that's why you feel so unsure…" Diana blinked away the tears. Reminding her that he had made it out through the other side must have done the trick.

"I never know what's the right decision when it comes to him." He shrugged. "I think that's part of why I was so… out of it during my years in deep space. I kept wondering how much of me was my dad and who that was. And then… there was always this voice telling me that I have Khan's blood running through my veins." His palm hurt. It wasn't until he looked down that he realized his hand had balled into a fist and he was digging his nails into his flesh. Sighing, he shook it out. "I keep wondering if maybe I'm acting more like him."

Diana's hand slipped to his arm. Her fingers were gentle and comforting. He knew they could bend metal without so much as cracking a knuckle, but she treated him with such care. "James T. Kirk." His name sounded somewhere between a scold and a tease. "You are nothing like Khan, and you never will be. You are open, you are giving and you are genuinely compassionate. And I am very honored to call you my friend." She squeezed his arm gently, smiling at him until he was forced to return the expression. "You are a hero. Look around you. Khan has no hold here and your crew is safe. You did this."

The way she said that resonated with him, but it didn't seem fair. He shook his head. " _We_ did this. If you hadn't of been here today, I wouldn't have been able to talk him down." He paused. "I don't want to think about what would have happened to Chekov."

"You don't need to. Chekov is fine and the _Farragut_ has set their course. And I'm sure some ensign will find him _very_ brave for what he did."

Chuckling, Jim stood and took a step closer to her, the drink and his melancholy forgotten. "I didn't think it was possible to find someone more optimistic than me. Or as tenacious as me."

"I don't believe in no-win scenarios." She remarked, pivoting on the stool to face him. "Neither do you."

 _Dammit, Jim._

He crossed his arms over his chest, staring her down a bit. "Diana, I think you might have learned far more about me than what was in the official report."

"I didn't need a report for that." She shrugged. "You are an open book and everyone on your ship greatly admires you. I told you I would learn the measure of the Federation through its people before I accepted the ambassadorship. And you have shown me more than enough to accept the offer from Conner."

"So, you're staying?" Jim realized how eager he sounded as soon as the question was out of his mouth. He didn't particularly mind that. "I guess the _Enterprise_ is appealing after all."

Diana's smile shifted from amusement to something else. Something more like what he'd seen on her face in the garden. "And her captain has his charms as well."

His heart honestly skipped a beat. Jim Kirk was a bit mortified with himself for it. He opened his mouth, intent on charming her, when a communicator chirped.

This time, it was Diana's. She pulled it free and opened it. "Ambassador Prince."

" _Ambassador,_ " Lieutenant Uhura's voice was velvety and warm, as if she had been looking forward to whatever news she was delivering. " _I have Admiral Kent for you. Would you like me to patch it through to your quarters?"_

Diana shook her head as she spoke. "No, thank you. I can take it in the observation lounge. Just give me a moment."

" _Yes, ma'am."_

Diana smiled, probably amused at the formality all over the ship. "Thank you, sister." She closed her communicator, then stood. "I need to tell the Admiral about my decision as well."

Jim thought for a brief moment back to the way Conner's arm had swung over Diana's shoulders. He found himself wishing for that kind of closeness and immediately fought it off with a grin. "Of course. The comm panel's over there. I'll leave you to it." He turned to leave, forcing his feet to carry him away from the woman who practically plagued his thoughts as of late.

"Jim?" He paused and turned to face Diana. When she smiled at him, he got the profound sense - not for the first or last time - that he was watching the sun rise. "Thank you for talking to me about Khan. I hope I didn't make it any more difficult for you."

"On the contrary," He said with a smile. "It was a weight off my shoulders." Nodding, he backpedaled until the doors opened. "Good night, Ambassador. See you in the morning."

* * *

Diana watched the doors to the observation lounge for far too long after Jim had vacated the room. Her mind was still reeling from the revelation that Jim had once died in the line of duty, and yet… here he stood.

She had half a mind to drop to her knees and pray to Athena for wisdom and guidance; for understanding of the enigma set before her. In so many ways, Jim Kirk took great pains to seem nothing like Steve.

And then she learned more.

She fought the urge to pray. After all, she had faith that the gods may still exist, but she had no trust left in them. She would not be so foolish.

Instead, Diana made her way to the comm panel near the viewport and flipped the switch to engage the transmission. After a moment, Conner's face flickered into view on the console.

" _Diana, this is a pleasure. Although, I figured you'd just come talk to me when you got back here._ " Conner was in civilian garb. From the view outside his window, it was nighttime at the _Yorktown_ as well.

"I still plan to visit, but this cannot wait." She replied, crossing her arms over her chest. "I wanted to tell you something that I think you need to hear. And no one has ever told you, so it's all the more necessary." Conner's brow furrowed, clearly dubious. "The war was not your fault, and no one could have done better than you." If Conner had anything he wanted to say, he didn't interrupt her. "And I see what you've done with Starfleet and the Federation. I trust that you are doing good things, even when humans try to ruin it for themselves, like they do." Exhaling, the weight on her shoulders seemed to slide off as she let the stress of the day finally leave her. "I'd like to stay here on the _Enterprise_. I will carry the torch forward if you keep the fires lit in the temple, my friend."

For a long moment, Conner was silent. Finally, he cleared his throat before replying. _"Glad to hear it, Diana. I… Thank you. I'll… I guess I'll see you when you get here, then._ "

Diana could tell that he was thrown, probably more than he wanted to show. So, she simply smiled. "Yes. I trust you'll have a glass of wine with me."

" _If you insist."_ He reached up to something out of her view. _"Good night, Diana._ "

The console went dark.

Diana hoped it would bring him some small comfort to know that she had played the events of the war over and over since reading them, and she could not have seen any other way to solve the issue. It was the great sacrifice of any hero, and in this case…. The League had given them all.

A war among those who were meant to protect the earth.

In the ashes, the people of earth had risen like the phoenix.

Diana couldn't help but smile.

Humanity didn't seem to believe in no-win scenarios. They still believed in love.

And so did she.


	16. Torch at the Crossroads: Teaser

**Torch at the Crossroads: Teaser**

 **Stardate 2264.60**

"Computer, access Starfleet Historical Archive. Starfleet Intelligence. Command code Cale-Zeta-Four-Nine-Two."

ACKNOWLEDGED.

"Retrieve files from A.R.G.U.S. database, pre-Federation, Pre-MACO records. Locate project name: Hecate."

ACKNOWLEDGED.

ACCESSING FILES…

DIRECTORY LOCATED. SPECIFY PROJECT FILE.

"Project File 002. I'm looking for the Louvre. Paris. Begin playback."

ACKNOWLEDGED.

 **APRIL 19, 2018. Paris, France, Earth. Operation Director: Amanda Waller**

The security camera footage peppered various market and street-level views of Paris streets. A streak passed across the screen, followed by another. The camera footage flipped to the B-roll for a reporter on the street. Screams, gritty and distorted from centuries of clean-up and over-processing, filled the senses.

" _Leave them alone!"_ The streak stopped in full view of the camera.

" _Mon dieu! C'est Wonder Woman!"_ The reporter shouted, only to be pushed out of view by the cameraman - presumably. The crowd were insignificant.

The mane of black hair. The forehead with the golden crown and the golden eagle etched into a red breastplate. _She_ was important. It was her, all right.

" _You will not touch them."_ Wonder Woman intoned. Her villain was off-screen, but the carnage wrought by the creature was evident around her. _"You will not make them look at you. They know the price."_ She was speaking to her enemy, but facing away from them.

" _Then, you will look at me. Champion."_

The camera zoomed in on the face of Earth's great champion. The blood on her face, the deep gash that cut to her shoulder bone. The Wonder Woman had fought with all she had, and still pressed on.

" _No. I will never._ "

" _Look at me, Champion, so I may have my revenge._ "

The camera could not keep up with the ensuing battle. Wonder Woman disappeared off-screen, then was thrown back into a fountain with a groan. She pulled herself from the wreckage, gripping something in her hand. A severed snake.

" _ **Look at me!**_ **"**

Wonder Woman stood and pulled the snake towards her face. She had manipulated it so that the dead thing's fangs were bared. Precision weapons for a task to protect herself. " _Never._ " Without hesitation, she mutilated herself. She plunged the fangs deep into her eye, screaming, then the other.

" _Oh, Diana, you poor fool._ " The new voice belonged to a figure that seemed all too happy to grace the camera with her presence. The flowing mane of violet hair fell past the woman's back, obscuring the full leather suit. _"How could you ever expect to fight blind?"_

Diana threw the snake away, turning towards the camera. Her eyelids were closed. She cried tears of blood. _"I will fight both of you until my death before I ever let you touch humanity. I will follow you to the ends of the universe._ "

"Pause playback."

ACKNOWLEDGED.

"Retrieve personnel file for Ambassador Diana Prince."

ACKNOWLEDGED. DISPLAYING.

The image was identical. She smiled.

"I knew you'd come back one day, Diana."

* * *

"Come on, tell me how it works."

Diana grinned, shaking her head as she sipped her cup of raktajino. It was late by Starfleet standards - the middle of third shift. The mess hall was quiet and dark, save for herself and the individual sitting next to her enjoying his own cup of raktajino. Outside, the warp bubble distorted the starscape. The _Enterprise_ was headed to Diana's first diplomatic mission, and the ship's chief ambassador was unable to sleep.

Her captain couldn't, either, and thus the two of them had resumed their delicate dance of quiet conversation over strong drinks. It had been two months since she had arrived and had become friends with many in the _Enterprise's_ magnificent crew.

But, none were so close to her as its captain, who was needling her about her lasso, coiled and resting on the table before them.

"I have an open mind. I'm more than willing to accept that you might be telepathic." He flashed her another one of those roguish grins, momentarily charming her into acquiescence.

"I told you," Diana chuckled, motioning to the lasso. "It is magical. The Lasso of Hestia compels any individual to tell the truth if they touch it. In turn, I can see the truth, and _yes -_ I believe I can share thoughts with them. But, it is _because_ of the lasso. Amplified by my own desire to seek the truth." She wasn't entirely sure she had ever believed the moniker that Athena had given her: Goddess of Truth. Gods were not needed in a time of such wonder and scientific advancement.

Jim drained his cup of coffee and sat up, eager. In some ways, he was older than Steve had been before she lost him. In other ways, though, he seemed the embodiment of childlike wonder. "Okay, then show me. Compel me to tell the truth." He pulled the lasso from the table and wound it around his wrist, holding it up to her.

Another night on the ship, another poignant reminder in something so mundane. She had spent nearly three centuries without Steve Trevor. The similarities between Jim and Steve had slowly turned from poignant reminders to frustrating distractions. She did not wish to live in the past. She wished - she _needed -_ to move forward.

Diana sighed and took hold of the other end of the lasso. "Very well. Think of something you do not wish for me to know. And we will see how long you can be duplicitous towards me."

Jim grinned, playfully arrogant and clearly excited for what he saw as a challenge. "All right." The lasso began to glow in her grip as she held the lasso limply in her lap.

"What are you thinking about right now?" Diana asked smoothly.

Without much hesitation, Jim blurted: "That I want to impress you." In a moment, his expression had shifted from puckish to utter confusion. He turned his attention completely to the lasso, then up to Diana. "I did not mean to say that."

His confusion was the only thing that stopped her from thinking through _why_ he might want to impress her. Diana still had no idea how she would have explained her closeness to him in the gardens on the _Yorktown_. And they had both kept busy enough that the topic did not come up.

"I told you that it compels you. You can try to guard your thoughts, but it is pointless to resist."

"I don't give up that easily." Jim leaned forward a bit, watching her instead of the lasso. "Come on. Best two out of three."

"Then just try to resist the question I ask this time." She advised. She considered what she would ask him for a long moment, then finally asked. "What are your security override codes for the ration allocations? We both know you drink more than your share of alcohol."

Jim opened his mouth. "They're…." The realization that he was about to give the information away gave him pause. He clamped his mouth shut tightly, refusing to obey the lasso. From the way he softly groaned and looked at his wrist, she could tell he was thrown by the magic. He groaned again, twisting in the seat as he shook his head a few more times.

She leaned forward, conspiratorially and playful. "Just tell me the security override codes, Jim. I promise not to tell Bones and get you in trouble."

Jim shook his wrist out a few more times, then finally blurted: "Kirk-Beta-Kappa-3-2-8!" As Diana giggled, truly amused, he pointed to the lasso before wiping sweat from his brow. "Does it have to be so hot?"

"This is the light of truth. It burns, Jim." Diana replied matter-of-factly, although she felt her heart quicken at the echo of Steve in his words. Again. "What did you think I would ask you?"

"I don't know," He shrugged. "I was kind of hoping you'd ask me if I thought you were attractive or something so I could segue that into asking you out - but I'm actually terrified that you'd say yes because Bones is right and you're completely out of my league." The truth flowed from his lips with ease. Too much ease.

The subject they had been dancing around was suddenly front and center, thanks to what should have been a harmless prank.

Diana knew she must have looked like a deer in headlights, as the old axiom went. She was speechless, mouth working wordlessly as she thought of some way to deflect from the admission. She settled for reaching forward to unwind the lasso from his wrist. "My apologies, Jim. That is not the kind of information I ask of the lasso, but once the faucet is open - "

"To be fair, Bones would say I have those thoughts every five minutes." She finally brought her gaze back up to his. Jim seemed… fine. Better than fine. As if the revelation had not occurred at all. "Don't worry about it. That's what I get for trying to impress you, right?"

Diana knew that she probably took too long to finally smile and laugh it off. But, it was all she could do. "It's all right. I have the beauty of Aphrodite, I have been told."

Jim motioned to her as if that was the crux of the issue. "See? Exactly. Anyone would be wondering what it would be like."

The two of them fell silent. The moment had passed. Idly, she found her fingers tapping her leg as she tried to look anywhere other than towards Jim. There wasn't anything to say. They had both gotten close to addressing what had _nearly_ happened, but then they let the moment get away.

It was best not to think about it.

She rose and began to make her way to the door. "On that note, I think I should get some sleep. You have sufficiently distracted me from my insomnia. I suggest you sleep as well."

Jim nodded, but otherwise made no move to stand. "I will. Thanks. Have a good night, Diana." He smiled, but her heart twisted as she recognized it was the same smile that didn't reach his eyes she'd seen when he had said goodbye to Chekov a month ago.

That sad smile haunted her the entire trip back to her quarters. It was obvious that they were both playing with fire, and she had inadvertently exposed his feelings, if not his intentions. Jim was always so open with her. But, apparently, not in all things.

Diana made her way back to her quarters, but sleep still eluded her. She took a seat at her desk, pulling free a small pouch she had kept on her belt.

The watch was still in fine condition, although it had stopped ticking centuries ago. Sighing, she held it to her cheek absently, eyes closed. Once, long ago, she thought that the watch had been an anchor for his soul. That perhaps he had refused to leave for Elysium and accept the blessings of true warriors.

But, as she felt the cool glass touch her skin, her heart sank as she thought of his smile. And the same smile on the face of a man 300 years his junior.

How could she ever move forward?

For the first time since she had been given that watch…

She did not feel Steve Trevor in her heart. No dalliance could change that. He was just… gone.

She could not give Jim what he so desired. She could not trust what she felt. In truth...

Her heart may as well have turned to stone.


	17. Torch at the Crossroads: Act I

**Torch at the Crossroads: Act I**

 _ **Author's Note:** Couple of things! First of all, happy birthday to one of my readers, and I hope you enjoy the birthday present! Thought I'd post a day early! _

_Also, I am in Florida, so as you may be aware, there's a good chance we will get hit with a hurricane this coming weekend. Just throwing that out there that my schedule might be off as I may have more pressing issues. Or no power. We'll see. :) I'm hoping for the best, preparing for the worst. I have a couple of chapters stocked up, so I might set them to queue, I don't know._

 _As always, thank you to everyone for all your enthusiasm and excitement! This episode is definitely more heavily Wonder Woman-inspired from the comics, so I hope you'll enjoy. To anyone asking about the person you saw looking up Diana in the teaser, let's just say there are clues to who that person is if you were to look close enough, and it's a character who likes to work out of sight until they're ready._

* * *

Nyota Uhura loved the energy that emanated from every crewmember when the _Enterprise_ settled in orbit around a fresh adventure. Whether it was a nebula, a station, or in this case, a planet. Each officer was giddy in his or her own way. For the captain, he had arrived ahead of his duty shift and had been on the bridge long before she reported for duty.

For Bones, he was especially focused on ensuring everyone's physicals were up to date ("In case one of you come back with some sort of alien porcine influenza"). For Spock, she knew all too well that his morning ritual had begun early, and she found him already studying every byte of information the computer had to offer on the planet and its people.

Nyota was no different. Upon learning of the mission, she spent the past week studying the Althean native tongue. That was typical and expected of a communications officer, but she especially enjoyed the unique way that the use of both fricatives and retroflex sounds to convey both the word, but also the actual emotional core behind the word. In a way, it reminded her of the courses in telepathic and empathic species, but in reverse. For psychically aware species, what you said was only half of the conversation. They heard every errant thought or emotion that accompanied the words.

For the Altheans, it did not matter what you _thought_ you were saying: the pronunciation of the very word conveyed all components of hidden meaning that languages like Standard and Vulcan used by tone.

It was a challenge to face, and one that Nyota was hungry for. But, typically, she was the only person on the ship to truly find the lingual aspects of communication as exciting as the cultural communication.

In that way, Diana was a breath of fresh air.

The two of them had begun meeting for morning coffee shortly after she arrived on the ship. In part, it was because Diana wanted to learn about how humanity had learned to crack lingual codes upon meeting other races. Diana had even given the lieutenant the unofficial ranking of Amazon. It was the first time Uhura had learned of the Amazon's charge to create a bridge of understanding between all men through language and profound diplomatic skill. The ambassador felt that Uhura was already fulfilling that role in her own way.

Every day, Diana insisted that they speak a new language for her. She learned with a speed unlike any student Nyota had ever worked with, and even beyond the skill levels of most professors. In just under two months, the woman had learned Vulcan, Klingon and Romulan to the same proficiency of a native speaker. In addition, she had courted Uhura until the younger woman finally relented and began to teach what she knew of Andorian.

Once the word had come from Starfleet that the _Enterprise_ was to escort Ambassador Prince to Althea for the opening conference to discuss Federation trade and border agreements, Uhura pivoted in her lessons. The two of them eagerly drank up the language over the brief time they had.

Now, standing in the transporter room and preparing to disembark, Diana's enthusiasm for the language had shifted to a more serious note. As the captain and Spock discussed the weather conditions of the planet, among other details only relevant for Scotty to program the transport, Diana pulled Nyota aside to speak.

" _Therologies resto uvara areth."_ Diana repeated the traditional greeting of the Altheans back to her tutor, clearly aware that something wasn't quite right in the pronunciation.

"Not quite." Nyota coached. She repeated the greeting again back to Diana, but stressed the way the last _r_ was to be airy. "The retroflex approximant is used in the word _areth_ as a gift to their gods. The _areth_ should feel like air is escaping your lungs directly to the gods, to show mutual respect."

Diana repeated it again, and after the nod of approval, smiled and rested her hands on Nyota's shoulders. "Sister, you are a fantastic tutor. I should have expected you would find a way to connect the language to the meaning when all else fails."

She grinned. "Ambassador, you've mastered several languages with ease. All I'm doing is helping to clarify and clean up. The universal translators will take care of the rest. But, the Altheans will most definitely be impressed that you used their traditional greeting."

Near the transporter control, she heard Spock. "That positive impression of the ambassador may be marred if you arrive late."

Diana quirked an eyebrow and moved past Nyota over to the first officer and captain. "We are ready to leave, Commander. I didn't want Scotty to feel rushed." The warm smile she sent Scotty's way only served to endear her to him more. Uhura was sure of it. Not a single person on the ship held any ill will towards Diana. Even Alex's widow had found comfort with the ambassador, no matter the role she had played in bringing Vanessa aboard.

In some ways, she was both ambassador and ship's counselor. Uhura found herself wondering if Bones had an opinion on that particular development.

"We're all ready to go, Ambassador." Scotty said. "But, are ye sure ye don't want a security officer?"

The captain crossed his arms over his chest and shot the ambassador a look that Uhura was all too familiar with. That expression that said he had made a point, been shot down, and was all too happy to try again. "Funny enough, Mister Scott, I asked the Ambassador the same thing."

"And I've already explained to you, Captain, that the Althean culture finds it disrespectful for visitors to arrive in large numbers." The tone of Diana's voice suggested the two of them had had this argument more than once in the two weeks leading up to the meeting. Uhura simply fought the urge to smile and patiently waited to see what would eventually come out of it.

"Four people is not an invasion party." Kirk remarked, skeptical.

"To the Altheans, it is." Diana sighed. "Besides, Troy was sacked not by an army, but by a small contingent of soldiers who hid in the statue of a horse. I understand the Althean government's concerns and, as a Federation Ambassador, am willing to agree to their terms." She motioned to the federation patch on her shoulder as proof of her commitment. "Otherwise, I would most assuredly have my armor."

Kirk's hand immediately went to his face, pinching the bridge of his nose as he tried to contain whatever it wanted to say. "Yes, well, that would certainly make the case that you're a one-woman army. Can't say that would look good for the Federation, either."

Uhura smiled, sharing a mischievous glance with the ambassador. He had just confirmed what Diana had most assuredly been thinking.

"I do not need protection, Captain. We both know I am capable of taking care of myself, as well as Lieutenant Uhura and Crewman Harper."

"Yes, but, I could go - "

Uhura cleared her throat before the two of them could circle back to why the Altheans did not want the captain of what they saw as a _warship_ on the planet. "Captain, I will be sure to give you a complete debriefing as soon as we return from the surface, but as Spock pointed out, we're going to be late. That won't look good for Ambassador Prince or the Federation."

"Nor is there a Starfleet regulation that would allow you to overrule the ambassador's choice of personal attaché, _Captain_." Spock added, a touch of wry humor in his voice. It might have gone unnoticed to those who didn't know the Vulcan as well, but she knew he was secretly enjoying the opportunity to point out to the adventurous captain that not even regulations could help him here.

Kirk finally sighed and motioned to the transporter pad. "All right, all right. You're right. The Ambassador absolutely knows what's best for her mission and I look forward to hearing the report."

"Thank you, Jim." Diana said with another smile. Nyota paused for just a moment as she made her way to the transporter pad. Diana's expression was warm but reserved. But, the captain… he was watching the ambassador with affection that had certainly gone right past friendly and into infatuated.

 _Oh, Jim. Some things never change…_ Nyota made a note to ask Spock about it when she returned. After Carol, she was certain she'd seen the last of Jim Kirk's liaisons with co-workers. Right up until they had crashed on Altamid, he had shown almost no interest in anything long-term.

The expression on his face did _not_ indicate this was a short-term interest.

Even after the three women - Harper behind Diana and Uhura on the pad - had taken positions, the fact that Jim was still looking at Diana with that same amused smile distracted her so much, the transporter beam caught her off-guard.

* * *

Althea was breathtaking.

Whether that was due to Diana's simple unfamiliarity with much of the alien worlds the Federation had visited, or because it was truly a gem among the stars, she had no way of knowing. But, she did know that the moment the transporter beam materialized them on the surface of the planet, the sky was a beautiful hue of lavender. Something told her that Jim would be quite disappointed that he had to miss such beauty.

They had been transported to the main diplomatic building - according to the coordinates provided by the Althean government. In the recent month following her official acceptance of the ambassadorship, Diana had spent significant time understanding the typical experiences of first contact and later diplomatic missions that starships assisted with.

Not many cultures still encouraged the use of open-air structures in an era of transporter technology and warp drives. For many Federation planets, their earlier history had poisoned the air, or made it so that having airtight facilities that could be cordoned off was a necessity.

Judging from the bright lavender sky above them, the Altheans didn't see this as a concern.

The report from the crew of the _U.S.S. Republic_ had been several months ago during their initial first contact. The captain had said very little of the planet or its people, only that they were amiable and interested in further contact. From Jim's opinion, Captain Sheppard was not overly keen on prose in her logs. She kept things to the point, and in doing so, had left the subsequent ambassador the pleasure of learning about the planet with fresh eyes.

This main building was crafted much like the old Greek parthenon, with great columns stretching towards the clouds, but open by choice, not through disuse and the ravages of time. There was no denying that the work of archeologists on proto-cultures among Earth-like planets were supported by cultures like this one. Here they were, hundreds of lightyears from Earth, and yet Diana could see the hand of the gods in this. Somehow.

But, this wasn't the time to focus on the architecture or the unique climate. The Althean delegation awaited.

Since she had no idea what to expect, Diana had found herself expecting humanoids more like the Andorians or Klingons with drastic differences in physiologies. Instead, she was faced with a people that looked more like they could have been long-lost earth colonists. _Was this Jim's reaction when he met me? Did he feel as though he had fallen through time, not space?_

She brushed the errant thought away. The dark olive tones of their skin may have been reminiscent of Earth's cradle of civilization, but their emerald green hair was not a color naturally occurring in humans from Earth. There was something profoundly striking in the particular hairstyle and adornments they used. Gold rings secured braids and curls. It gave her the impression of gilded serpents that tumbled down their shoulders.

Diana suppressed a hint of revulsion. _These people are not gorgons, but the coloring is… exactly the same_. How long had it been since she had slain Medusa in the streets of Paris? Two centuries had passed, but the scars still remained. While she had eventually healed from blinding herself, it had been a painful recovery.

It had also been the first time Kal suggested she take a break. She spent the next two months in Metropolis helping Lois with her newborn son. In many ways, it had been a blessing. She had finally begun to forge a family in that new age of heroes.

She reminded herself that family had sent her here for a reason.

Diana stepped down off of the transporter pad. Lieutenant Uhura and Crewman Harper followed after her, careful not to crowd the Altheans. There was a sacred harmony in their diplomatic envoy. Each had three individuals. Trinities occurred in all things, across many cultures. One day, she would ask Vanessa what her philosophers said of such things. _When I see her again._

The lead Althean delegate looked to be in her mid-forties by earth standards. Her other two delegates stood on either side of her, in profile view only. They each faced off to the sides, as if they could not look at them. It was something Diana had seen before in her own people. In the Themysciran ritual for a goddess rarely invoked.

The lead Althean held a key in hand. She touched it to her forehead reverently before breathing, " _Therologies resto uvara areth."_

In response, Diana gently took the key and touched it to her head as well, then repeated. " _Therologies resto uvara areth."_

As she handed back the key, the three delegates spread out a bit more. That sense of staring at a triplicate goddess dissipated instantly. In addition, the Althean delegate's smile told her that she'd correctly repeated the blessing.

"Welcome to Althea, Ambassador of the Federation." The universal translator in Diana's communicator recoded the Althean language to Standard in nano-seconds. According to Uhura, some languages were too complex or too new for the translator to do so without delay. Given half a year to decompose the language from the _Republic's_ interaction had meant that it sounded instantaneous. It sounded like standard, and the timbre of the woman's voice didn't seem to change at all. "I am Roda, the Great Key of the Althean Hoop. You may address me as such. These are my torches, Thera and Umatha." Diana recalled the logs. She was the equivalent of the majority leader in a senate from old democracy, and the two delegates were senators of a sort. A high honor.

"I am Ambassador Diana Prince. These are my attachés: Lieutenant Nyota Uhura and Crewman Rose Harper. I'm quite pleased to meet you and look forward to experiencing your culture."

Roda smiled, putting the key into a pouch on her belt. "Then you will not be disappointed. We were pleased you could arrive for such an auspicious day. Today is the Ritual of Etaceh, our great patron. We should very much like another trinity at the table of our crossroads."

"Crossroads?" Uhura asked, doing her best to keep pace with Diana without breaking with decorum. "Great Key, forgive me." Diana caught the honorific and smiled. "We're still learning your culture."

Roda turned to the lieutenant with a smile that suggested she was as happy for this meeting as Diana was. "Our patron is the lady of the crossroads of life and death. To honor her on this feast day, we leave her a banquet at the crossroads to bless us with another year of magic."

"Magic?" Diana echoed. The surprise was a happy one. Most cultures had abandoned concepts of magic. At least, that was how the _Enterprise_ crew suggested it. Many Starfleet officers didn't hold deeply held religious beliefs, either. Or, if they did, they kept that information off-duty. "My understanding is that your people have been travelling the stars for several decades, and several years with warp travel. I did not realize your people held such a strong inclination for magic and sorcery."

Roda motioned for the ambassador to follow her down another open air hall. A shadow passed over them as some great bird of prey soared over them and momentarily blotted the sun. Diana found herself wondering how this world could exist. The colors were so radically different than what she expected, it felt as though she'd stepped into a fever dream. "Ambassador - "

Diana held her hand up. "Diana, please."

"Diana." She nodded, then continued. "Our great goddess is the mother of magic. She is the creator of _pharmakeia_." Diana's steps faltered for a moment at the distinctly Greek word. Was it a translation error or intentional? "The great arts of potion-making and sorcery have been with our people through all phases of our evolution. Our more ancient ancestors practiced the art, and we have continued along our development as such."

"But, warp technology isn't magic." Harper remarked. The woman was nearly Diana's height, but lacked the tact. She had been chosen as a science officer so that they could evaluate the technological capabilities of the culture. "That's science: quantum physics and warp theory."

Diana quickly added. "Crewman Harper means no disrespect, but it is a curious distinction."

Roda didn't seem fazed. "Curious, yes, but immaterial. You are familiar with magic of your own people, yes?"

"Historically." Harper acquiesced.

"Good. Tell me, when your medical officers create medicines, do they not simply follow the same methodologies of your old sorcerers? They know the properties of atoms and molecules, organic paramecium and prions, then create a potion that treats the individual of an affliction." Roda shrugged. "The goddess blesses us with the same. To understand the base elements and how they combine to create reactions is to know how to cast the spell."

Diana was instantly fascinated. This culture believed that all their advancement _was_ magical in nature. Even when one could explain the magic, it was _still_ magic. "That is amazing, Great Key." She breathed, smiling. "I would love to hear more."

"And I will gladly do so. But, first, we must eat. For when the sun goes down, we shall begin the ritual of the Etaceh."

* * *

The sun had risen high in the sky, then eventually fallen. Through it all, Nyota had spent the better part of the day talking until she nearly lost her voice. The banquet itself had been quite delicious, even if she felt she could have stopped eating after the first two courses. But, like many cultures, it was rude to refuse, so she'd taken to making sure she ate at least a little bit of every dish that was brought before her.

It turned out to be fuel for the evening that she desperately needed. Once the initial conversation on technological advancement as magic out of the way, the conversation had spread across multiple channels. It reminded Uhura of old academy exercises in her comm studies classes. A communications officer had to be able to listen to multiple conversations and transmissions while still pulling out pertinent details.

It was Uhura's job to listen and help ease the negotiations, but only if necessary. Ambassador Prince was the star of the evening, and they certainly gave her ample opportunity to work.

Diana charmed every person she met. Uhura couldn't help but be amused that for every Althean that met her reluctantly, they came away a friend to the Amazon and the Federation. Diana quickly found herself surrounded with the people _she_ wished to speak with, not the ones that the Altheans felt were necessary for negotiation. The Great Key Roda remained at her side, the two of them quickly striking a solid rapport for the negotiations, but overall, Diana was masterful at guiding the Altheans towards the trade agreement the Federation wanted, as well as understanding what the Altheans hoped to get out of the alliance.

When it became clear that Diana more than had the intricacies of the negotiations well in hand, it gave Uhura the opportunity to seek out her own partners in conversation. As it turned out, most of the planet was willingly under a functional theocratic economy. The main heads of trade and economy were considered priests, and Uhura spent almost an hour discussing the major points of trade with the high priestess of the Temple of Wealth. Their currency system was based around fealty to the gods, and each citizen received back a portion of their tithe to the goddess every festival. Since each citizen was provided a number of professions upon reaching age, there was virtually no unemployment. They had successfully managed to barter and trade to a peak societal level of prosperity.

As a result, other disciplines had begun to spring up in tithing. One such discipline had an advocate in Harper's companion, the head alchemist (quantum scientist) of the Temple of the Stars. As the Altheans showed interest in travel, they chose to tithe to the Temple of the Stars. Other economic temples would also send a portion of their tithes to the Temple of the Stars, and thus, funded space travel.

Uhura had never seen science, economy and religion blend together quite like this. The Klingons had gods, yes, but they had killed them and now lived on a code of Honor. Honor was more about the actions, less about the guiding hand behind them.

Now that they were back on the _Enterprise_ , Nyota found herself eagerly waiting for the opportunity to speak to Diana about the culture and its similarities to ancient Greece. Uhura had not spent much time thinking about Earth's religions, not even her own family's religious background. When she came to the _Enterprise_ , she had compartmentalized that part of her life and focused on the scientific nature of what they did. The interfaith chapel on the ship had been as much a place of quiet reflection as anything.

Diana seemed to change that. Once she had explained her heritage to the senior staff, she found herself thinking more and more about what it was she believed. She still didn't know, but she knew that the woman was at least as long-lived as she claimed from historical records. And if she could kill gods… well, it seemed a moot point to dwell too much on the ones who were around, and more about what people could do in their names.

Curiously, Diana had never let onto the Altheans that she was anything more than a human ambassador. Even when it became clear that something about the Althean ritual - and maybe even their culture at large - had unsettled her, she'd simply pressed on. Now that they were back on board, all of those questions would be answered.

Crewman Harper had handed them her data padd with her official and brief report to provide to the captain, then Diana had gladly dismissed her. The woman was clearly not used to so much conversation, and was happier back in Engineering with Scotty and Keenzer. The important thing was that Harper had given the sign-off that the Altheans were truly warp capable and had the resources they promised on-planet. They could successfully trade with the Federation.

"Their entire economy is fascinating." Uhura remarked as the two women made their way up to Deck 1, heading for the briefing room. "I know that many cultures will have their religions interlaced with their economy, but the notion of tithing and using that _as_ the currency and wage system so that they can fund all manner of infrastructure and research…. That's so unusual."

Diana stepped into the turbolift and rested her hand on the console, programming it for Deck 1 before she replied. "It's very similar to the Roman Empire, although I admit the Romans were not so keen on handing over infrastructure to the temples. But, medicine, prophecy, household matters, all of those were part of the gods. My sister, Epione, she frequently prayed to Hestia and Athena for new remedies and blessings to heal others. Although, using tithes to fund warp travel is…" She chuckled, equally as amused and as curious as Uhura. "That is certainly the apex of that structure's evolution. The Romans never would have been able to do that. Too many others from different religions. The Altheans are strangely homogenous in terms of religious sects."

"It might be that they have since pushed out other beliefs." The thought didn't occur to Uhura lightly. They might have very well seen what the Altheans _wanted_ them to see.

"Perhaps…" The two of them stepped off of the turbolift and headed to the briefing room. Uhura could tell that Diana was still distracted, maybe even troubled.

The doors to the briefing room slid open easily. Kirk was sitting at his normal seat at the end of the table, pouring over a datapadd. Diana stepped in first, and Uhura followed after just in time to catch a smile on her friend's face that definitely confirmed her suspicions from earlier in the day.

Jim was definitely interested in Diana, and it was clear he was trying to keep things as professional as he could. She just wondered how long that would last.

Jim set the datapadd down on the table and motioned for the two of them to take a seat. When he glanced over at Uhura finally, his expression shifted from somewhat amazed to straight up mischief. "Ambassador, Lieutenant. I trust the meeting with the Altheans went well."

"Quite well," Diana said as she took a seat near him. "They're very fascinating. More importantly, Crewman Harper handed us her report. I can send it to Admiral Kent and ease his concerns about whether or not they actually had the resources in the quantity and quality they promised."

"Really?" Kirk reached out and took the offered padd so he could skim it. "This is really good news. The fleet needs more dutonium. We're behind on the last phase of fleet restoration because of this shortage." Once he was satisfied at the report, he handed it back to Diana and leaned back in his chair. "Any chance they'll take a standard trade agreement?"

She nodded. Uhura could almost feel the joy radiating off the other woman. She was infectious like that. "Their Great Key gave the preliminary sign-off, and I spoke with several of their Torches - their word for senators. The Althean Hoop - their Senate - should approve the official agreement quickly. I provided the data module with the subspace relay and coordinates so that they can send the news directly to the Federation Trade Council once it has been ratified."

"Mission accomplished, then." He grinned. Uhura found herself doing the same, although it was more because Jim had never been _that_ interested in trade agreements. He liked negotiating peaceful surrenders and getting into trouble, or getting his hands dirty. Normally, he avoided ambassadors. Yet, Diana had given him a sudden interest in politics? "Great job, Ambassador. Not that I had any doubt."

"You seemed to have at least a few," Diana gently reminded him. The grin that slid onto her features was more teasing. Uhura suddenly felt like maybe she was in the middle of a conversation for two. "I know it wasn't a matter of protection, you just wanted to come along."

"You are absolutely right," Jim said. "I really hate sitting in the chair when I could be on an away mission. But, I could have replaced Harper."

"Actually, they work in same-gender trinities for this particular type of negotiation." Uhura chimed in. She almost felt bad that she interrupted what was quickly going to a very amusing exchange, but she could ask Jim about it after the briefing officially concluded. "It's a key component of their culture. The only exceptions they have are for their people they consider two-sexed, and they're especially revered so most often don't make it to the Hoop. They're normally pulled into priesthood early." The two of them turned to look at her, both genuinely surprised that she knew that. "The Ambassador chatted with the Senate. I chatted with the clergy. There's an entire social structure around the Trivia."

"Trivia…" Jim repeated, lacing his fingers together and resting them on his stomach as he gently shifted his chair back and forth. "That's Latin, right?"

"Yes." Diana's smile faded, replaced with an expression more neutral, focused. "In fact, they share many similarities to old Greek and Roman cultures." She rested her hands on the table. Clearly, whatever had unsettled her on the planet was still on her mind.

"I'm sure there are at least six archeologists who would love to hear that," Jim said with an easy smile.

"I'm not sure it's a matter of coincidence or proto-culture." Diana added, looking over at Uhura. "The people are advanced, yes, and seemingly by their own technological development, but… I think someone may have interfered with their culture in some way. It was why I was so quiet during the ritual of Etaceh."

"It wouldn't be the Federation," Uhura reminded her. "We haven't been out this far."

"I don't think the Federation would have infused more Greek culture in the event of contact, either." The ambassador agreed. "I am somewhat curious as to how a ritual such as that one came to that culture. Based on my limited exposure to the Romulans, there are many archetypes in their evolution similar to Earth's Roman culture. The Romans worshipped in this way as well."

"I don't recall either the Romulans or the Greeks having a goddess called Etaceh." Kirk replied, a bit skeptical. Uhura had to admit she agreed.

"No, but, the Key said they only began that particular ritual in the last few centuries." Reaching up, Diana rubbed her eyes and sighed. She seemed to be a bit more tired than she had let on. "But, perhaps it's nothing. I just can't shake the feeling that it all felt familiar. The Altheans even looked similar to… to someone I fought once. A long time ago."

"Who?" Jim's tone suggested he was worried Diana was alluding to another Darkseid.

She shook her head. "She is long gone. I know for a fact she died. But, if I told you I slew Medusa, would you believe me?"

The room fell silent for a moment. Finally, Jim broke it by tossing his hands into the air. "Why do you just drop that kind of stuff on me? No preamble, no set up."

"I am a goddess, the daughter of Zeus." Diana laughed. "I just showed you what the lasso can do last night and…" She trailed off. Suddenly, the room seemed to fill with an awkward tension as the woman could no longer look Jim in the eye.

Uhura couldn't help but feel as though, yet again, she was the third wheel. That had to stop. Clearing her throat, she sat up and rescued Diana from further conversation. "Ambassador, they had you talking all day. Why don't you take a break? I can fill the captain in on the ritual, if he wants to hear the details."

Diana shot Uhura a grateful look, then stood. "Yes, sister. I appreciate the suggestion. I'm going to do just that. I need a tall drink of water and a few hours to rest after I make my report. If you two don't mind, I'll go get started." She smiled over at Jim, nodding. "Captain, Lieutenant." She turned and nodded to Uhura, then made her way out of the briefing room.

Uhura nearly sighed aloud as Jim watched Diana go with all the focus of a cat tracking a toy in the air. Once the door closed, she instead cleared her throat and leaned forward to catch his eye. "Jim."

He tore his gaze away from the door. "Mm?"

"Is there something going on that I should know about?" She clasped her hands together and rested them on the table. She probably looked like a professor about to scold a student.

"Not that I can think of, no." Jim said, already evasive. He had calmed over the years, was less inclined to show his full hand, but he still had his own tells. The fact that he was back to watching the door meant his mind was still on the woman who had vacated the room.

"About yourself and the Ambassador…" She pressed. "Any possible and ill-advised interest you might have?"

That seemed to catch his attention fully. He turned to face her, sitting up in the chair. "What do you mean 'ill-advised?' Why would my interest be ill-advised?"

"Do you want the short list or the long, Jim?" Uhura said with a dry chuckle. "You don't have the best track record. And, I know that ever since Carol, you haven't really shown interest in anyone - "

"Can we not do this right now?" He asked, exasperated. She could tell he knew she was going to continue on regardless, but it was just short of a juvenile whine. "I've been focused on being captain, so forgive me if I'm a little distracted by a profoundly intelligent and well-spoken woman, Uhura."

"It's not that you're distracted, you're clearly hanging on her every word, Jim."

"Look, do I make commentaries on your relationship with Spock?" If he thought that would help him out of that, her reaction quickly disavowed him of that perception.

She scoffed. "Are you kidding me? All the time! You're the one who always wants to know if we're together or if we're fighting, and I'm pretty sure that's, in part, because you are a sucker for gossip." Uhura stood and made her way over to him, genuinely amused. "But, trying to deflect just means I know that this is getting under your skin."

"She's an ambassador, Uhura, and I don't think she's interested. I'm... trying not to make things awkward." Jim finally sighed.

"Well, you better be careful, captain." She pat his shoulder before making her way towards the door. "Because it was _really_ awkward just now. At this rate, you probably want to just get things out into the open."

As the doors shut behind her, she could just barely hear Jim's reply: "Remind me to put you on third shift next week."

Spock turned from his console, quirking an eyebrow at her. It was clear that he'd heard Jim's remark as she stepped onto the bridge.

Instead of replying, she just shook her head and walked back to her communications station.

At least she and Diana had enjoyed themselves. That negotiation had been quite uneventful all things considered.

With no more distractions, maybe that would help Jim with… whatever he was going through. She couldn't help but wonder how long it would be fore Diana realized that she was putting off signals she was _just_ as interested...


	18. Torch at the Crossroads: Act II

**Torch at the Crossroads: Act II**

 _Author's Note: Thanks for all the well wishes and good juju in advance of the hurricane! We are staying put, so we'll see how it goes. Thankfully, working on this has been a good outlet for my anxiety the last few days. I just have to say, everyone has such wonderful diverse opinions on what they want to see, but I hope that you'll all like where this goes. I know some characters haven't had a chance to talk with Diana much yet "onscreen", but as we get further into the season, I promise there are some AWESOME scenes coming up. **Also, thanks to Jennifer for catching a typo. My beta and I missed it four times and that stuff always bugs me. It's fixed. :D**_

* * *

A good night's sleep was a misnomer in space, but the restorative effects were still just as potent. After eight hours of silence and honest rest, Diana felt refreshed. With the ship well on its way to the next destination at warp speed, she was ready for another day. Another day of searching out the unknown.

Another day watching the man who looked and sounded every bit like Steve commanding his ship while never knowing why Diana simultaneously gravitated towards him and pulled away.

Menalippe had urged her not to rule _as_ her mother, but to be her own sovereign. She wondered what the general thought of her now. Would she still stand beside her, an ever-present voice reminding Diana that looks were deceiving? Even now, as Diana slipped on the Federation uniform and carefully set her lasso on its hook under the jacket. Would her advisor tell her that she was right to be cautious while simultaneously telling her to open her heart to others?

 _You still do not know if he is who he says he is._ Her mother's voice echoed in her mind, as if she were standing right beside her daughter.

Perhaps that was why Diana felt as she did. For every day that went by where she could appreciate Captain James T. Kirk, another passed where words and expression rang all too familiar and sent her reeling. True, the days between those reminders had grown, and she had found that certain mannerisms meant differently when Jim did them, but… it wasn't fair to keep pushing him away, not when she found herself easily falling into flirtatious conversation. Nor was it very like her. She had come to know her own heart intimately since leaving THemyscira the first time.

But, perhaps that was the issue. To see Jim, to think of Steve… it returned her to a time when she loved so openly. When it had ended in tragedy, and in this case, perhaps she felt discretion was the better part of valor.

Diana passed her desk as she left the bedroom and her feet stilled. Steve's watch still sat on the surface, staring back at her as if to remind her that she could not escape her past. She could not escape him anymore than she could escape the eerie unease that had settled over her during the Althean banquet.

It was not just the commonality of seeing Steve everywhere she went on this ship, simply because he shared a visage with Jim.

The ritual, the culture of the Altheans; They all reminded her of a goddess, fearsome and powerful, that the Amazons only invoked when in need of great power. She, too, had been called a goddess of magic. She, too, had been the goddess of the crossroads.

Diana did not dare speak her name. She wondered if doing so would summon her from the depths of the unknown. If not the goddess herself, certainly the witch that had once plagued Diana over the years.

There were too many coincidences. The Altheans looked like Gorgons, the race of creatures that Medusa had hailed from. It had been well over two centuries since Diana had hewn Medusa's head from her shoulders on the streets of Paris. Like so many things, it felt both like another lifetime and also as if it had happened yesterday.

But, every time she tried to move forward, another reminder appeared from her past. This one was not nostalgic and bittersweet, however. The Altheans shared a god with one of Diana's greatest enemies.

Diana could only pray that the witch Circe was long gone. The woman who had freed Medusa, who had tried to steal her godly powers to turn the people against the Justice League… She was _evil_.

And she had not been the only one of Diana's enemies to use the past against her.

Sighing, she tapped a button on the desk and a drawer slid open. Carefully, she pulled free a small box with the Starfleet insignia engraved upon it. Upon arriving on the _Enterprise_ , she had kept Steve's watch with her without fail. It was either in a pocket or in the pouch normally kept on her belt.

But, this… it was too fragile. She had nearly left it on Themyscira when she grabbed her armor. It had been a split-second decision to slip the carefully preserved image into the large pouch that sat at the back of her hip that day. No sooner than she had been given quarters, she had placed it in this box and thanked the Kryptonians that their crystal technology was far more sturdy than glass.

Diana opened the lid.

With the care of that same lover so many years ago, Diana pulled the picture free. The Kryptonian crystal lattice had kept the image in pristine condition, but nothing could sharpen that which wasn't there. The image, each of them blurred yet utterly unique, brought her back to Veld for just a moment. It was a pale reminder, but it was all she had.

Life had seemed so simple then. She could not have known the price of eternity. How could she have understood that fate had seen fit to give her Steve once, then take him away, and now… torture her with reminders.

She couldn't shake the sensation that she was on the _Enterprise_ because it was her duty to be. She had begun to forge friendships without trying, but it didn't change the fact that circumstances continued to purposely throw her at Jim specifically.

Her mother would have told her that the gods could be cruel. That they looked down on the fragility and infinitesimal span that was human life, and they played with it for fun.

Antiope would have told her to listen to her gut. To listen to that same voice that told her of power beyond her understanding long before she tapped into it.

But, how to know which way the scales would tip? Friend or foe? Coincidence or destiny? Reward or punishment?

 _You always expect the battle to be fair. A battle will_ _ **never**_ _be fair._

Antiope's lesson had been taught well and with great impact. She had taught Diana to always be on her guard.

The first step of being on one's guard was to take stock in the situation and to learn what the enemy did not wish for you to know. If she wanted to wrestle the serpent of her conflicted heart, she would need to face the truth. She would never find solutions wandering aimlessly from ambassadorial mission to mission. She would need to seek them out.

And she knew just the man to help her.

* * *

Leonard "Bones" McCoy had not started his morning near as well as he would have liked. First, he'd dropped a damn cup of coffee on himself and had to change uniforms before he even left his quarters. Then, he found out someone - probably one of the nurses - had "borrowed" one of his medical kits and broken the tricorder. Finally, he had to have a very difficult discussion with one of the young ensigns in security. Starfleet had rules about families on board ships, and he didn't much look forward to coaching her on her options once they got back to _Yorktown_ in a couple of months _._

His scowl most likely looked like he'd done that so long his face froze that way.

As the doors to the sickbay hissed open, he steeled himself for what was probably going to be another lecture from Scotty about how long it was going to take before he could get half of his medical bay back. Instead, he caught sight of shapely legs and striking features that reminded him that some days the _Enterprise_ made dreams come true.

"Ambassador Prince," Bones greeted with an easy smile, his morning troubles forgotten. He set his medical padd down and walked out of his office to greet her. "Well, aren't you a sight for sore eyes. I thought for sure you'd be sleeping for a week. From the way Uhura told it, you were quite the social butterfly."

Bones had a discerning eye for a beautiful woman, but an even more discerning one for a beautiful mind. Diana was both of those things, and he knew damn well why Jim had been more than his usual friendly self in recent months. The captain was smitten. Hell, even Bones was a bit smitten. Something told him that Diana wasn't interested. Not in him, at least. Jim, on the other hand…

The doc had a feeling the Ambassador saw Jim as more than just her benchmark on humanity's progress.

"It was a very illuminating meeting, yes," Diana conceded, flashing him a grin. "But, I assure you, I'm fine. I just needed a bit of sleep."

Arching an eyebrow, Bones watched as she made her way across the sickbay towards one of the medical beds. "So, then, what brings you into my humble corner of the ship?"

"You asked me if you could run a full physical when I came aboard." She kept her eyes on the biobed, running her fingers over the padding as if examining it. "At the time, I wasn't sure I wanted to. But, now that I've been here and I do not see myself leaving in the near future, I agree that you have every right to know how to treat me." She chuckled and glanced up at him. "Not that I foresee any malady striking me that I would not heal naturally from."

Bones sighed, amazed that she could have so easily mastered the art of the backhanded compliment. "Yeah, well, that whole healing thing you've got going is all the more reason to let me take a look at you. I don't suppose you ran genetic and spectral analyses on your own DNA while you were on Themyscira with all your fancy Kryptonian tech, did you?" The look she gave him was guilty. "That's what I thought. Let me guess: You're a god and you don't need anyone else telling you different."

"No, actually." Diana turned to face him fully. Her expression had slid from amusement to troubled. Bones felt his heart twist a little at the idea that he'd done that. "I didn't want anyone to tell me I _was_ different." A sad chuckle escaped her lips in a puff of air. "You see, I spent so long wanting to be an Amazon, then when I realized I wasn't, I tried to be just like anyone else on Man's World. The truth is, I've never been any of the things I wish to be, so I didn't want the painful reminder."

Bones tried to hide his slack-jawed surprise at the notion that a god wouldn't be too keen on bein' a god and went to grab a medical kit. "The way Spock talks about the Vulcan lifespan, you'd think _he_ was immortal. He doesn't seem too upset by it."

"He's young." She said. "He may be an old soul, but he's still young compared to me. It can be taxing to persist when all around you eventually fades."

Bones scoffed as he rummaged through a drawer for a set of vials for extraction. "Oh, it's 'taxing', she says. As if that isn't the most damn depressing thing I've heard all day."

"Don't let it upset you, Doctor. I don't regret the friendships I made, the people I loved. It's just that… it can be easy to get lost in the dream that I, too, may grow old with them."

Bones turned to look over at her to find her seated on the biobed. It occurred to him - quite suddenly - that he wasn't so sure he wanted to hear this. It wasn't that he wasn't curious. But, it felt strange to have the woman that had used Jim as her confidant suddenly waxing poetic before him. He had _no_ desire to fill Jim in on any of this. Might tarnish his rosy view of her. "Maybe you will. One day. I've got the latest medical technology that Starfleet has to offer, so we could probably put a dot on that date."

She shook her head, clearly amused at what she probably saw as arrogance. Bones saw it as determination. "You can try."

"As far as I'm concerned, sweetheart, you're just another long-lived alien with some interesting strength and durability perks." Bones replied smoothly as he pulled the tricorder sensor free from its casing and began a slow sweep of her vitals. His eyes flicked from the screen up for a moment and he was satisfied to see he'd brought a smile to her face.

"Then, I hope I can trust in your confidence. I've never been quite as… overly cautious as some of my other colleagues in sharing information about my genetics, but I did not want to see my abilities become Augmentations." For a moment, Bones had nearly forgotten she knew about Khan and his pack of wolves more intimately than anyone living did today.

He set the tricorder sensor down for a second and stood straight. "Diana. On and off the record, I will never share anythin' about you that you don't want me to. But, if we run into some strange infection that you're immune to and no one else is, I'm gonna try to figure out why. Starfleet Medical is about the survival and treatment of _all_ species. You'd be on that list. Not to be exploited, but to be treated with the best care I have." Bones liked to play the surly old curmudgeon, but anyone who knew him more than a day could tell that he was dedicated to the medical profession and the oaths he took.

From the look on his patient's face, she'd realized the same. "Thank you, Leonard."

He cleared his throat and grabbed the sensor, determined not to end up somehow being confidante for both the captain and resident ambassador. He wasn't too sure Diana would appreciate his curmudgeonly nature quite as much. "Don't mention it. Now, I'm gonna do a full sweep of your vitals and take a sample of your blood so I can run some cellular and molecular-level tests. My guess is that your cells are gonna make Khan's look like child's play."

"When I left Man's World, cellular and molecular analysis was still relegated to highly specialized research." She'd gone right back to being amused. In the time he'd worked with her, Bones had quickly begun to realize that seemed to be her default reaction to humanity's advancement. "And now you can run complicated scans with this thing." She pointed to the sensor, then sighed. "I have so much I still need to learn if I'm going to keep up with everyone. I can't even pilot a shuttle."

Bones scoffed. "It ain't all roses. Believe me, I know how transporters work and I still hate the damn things."

"You know, the first time I came to London after leaving Themyscira, I thought it was hideous." She grinned. "But, everything has its charm. In going to London, I then got to ride a train and I _loved_ trains."

The doctor barked out a laugh as he finished the last of his tricorder sweep. "Combustible coal engines? Do you have any how much of a death trap those things were?"

"You are very obsessed with how one can die, Doctor McCoy."

"Well, occupational hazard," He shrugged. He didn't particularly care to explain why his humor was as dry as the deserts of New Vulcan. Instead, he pivoted the conversation back to her original point. "If you want to learn how to pilot, I'm sure Sulu would be willing to give you a couple of lessons."

"He has mentioned it, yes. I see very little of him, unfortunately." Diana was watching him as he pulled a vial and a micro-syringe. "His schedule has him on duty most of the day when I am free to roam."

"Well," Bones locked the vial and glanced up at her. "I'm sure if you asked Jim, he'd make an exception, shift the schedule around a bit." He motioned to her arm and she pulled off her jacket so she could expose her shoulder. "With Chekov gone, we've got a rotating navigator. Might not be a bad idea to see how other crewmembers work with each other."

"I wouldn't take advantage of my friendship with the captain just to chat with his pilot." She said with a smile before going quiet as he worked.

Bones couldn't help but smile at the surprised look on her face when he drew a vial of blood without leaving a mark. "Micro-syringe. Allows individual blood cells to be extracted in between skin cells. And the hyposprays I carry allow me to program the individual molecular structures of any medication I need to dispense, including dosage."

"You're crafting medication by the molecule?" She asked, eyes wide with genuine appreciation.

"More of this cutting edge technology mankind was cooking up prior to the war. Unfortunately, it took well into our time working with the Vulcans after First Contact before we figured it out." Bones finished extracting another vial with a press of the hypo to her shoulder and a quick hiss. "But, the stuff you probably thought of as experimental is still from the dark ages as far as I'm concerned."

Bones finished with the second vial and pulled back so he could unlock it and set it onto the tray beside him. When he turned back to her, he realized the ambassador had gone quiet. One hand was on her shoulder, rubbing the spot where he'd extracted. She seemed to be staring at a spot on the floor or past him. Nowhere in particular. "Diana?" He prompted for her attention.

"Leonard, I have a question for you." Diana closed her eyes. She seemed to be steeling herself for whatever question it was. Bones wasn't too sure he wanted to know what it was. "But, I have to ask that I have your confidence. You cannot tell anyone - including Jim - what I am about to ask you."

Red alert klaxons went off in his mind and his eyebrows shot up. "What in blazes are you about to ask me that I can't tell Jim about? He's not just the captain, he's my best friend. I don't appreciate being put in the middle - "

"Consider it doctor-patient confidentiality, then, but I cannot speak to him about this until I have the answers I seek. And I think you could help me with them." Bones hated this. He hated everything she was asking of him, and he didn't even know the damn question yet. But, her expression was pained. Reluctant. "Bones," She added. "Please."

Sighing, he stepped away from her and wheeled his tray towards his office while he mulled over the request. When he spoke again, he tried to keep the bite out of his voice. "Whatever you're about to ask me: Does it involve the safety or health of anyone on this ship? Is this something that could put them in danger?"

Diana slipped off of the biobed and put her jacket back on. "Yes, and no. It is about a particular crewmember, but there's no health risk."

Bones arched an eyebrow, lips pursed. "That's specific." He said sarcastically.

She crossed the distance between him with purpose, pulling something free from the jacket's breast pocket. "This is very old, so I would ask that you be quite gentle with it. But, given the advancements in your technology and understanding of genetics, I am hopeful you will have an answer." It was an old earth photograph. He could tell by the sepia tones - although he'd not seen any frame quite like this one.

Bones took it without a word, scrutinizing the grainy figures in the picture. The central figure was Diana, to be sure. But, the man beside her… on her left… The resemblance wasn't just uncanny, it _was_ Jim. It had to be.

"I'll be _damned_." He swore, then cast his gaze back up at Diana. "What the hell am I looking at?"

"That man - the one who I am sure you realize looks very much like Jim - was the man who crashed on Themyscira and told me of the War to End All Wars. His name was Steve Trevor. He was an American spy assigned to British Intelligence and he… we were very close."

"You were lovers." Bones said. It didn't take a medical degree to draw that conclusion from the way she was talking about him. What she didn't _say_ was certainly present in how she was saying it.

"Briefly. We didn't… have much time." Her voice briefly disappeared. He had to wonder how many times she'd told this guy's story. Had she ever? If it was so long ago, maybe she'd buried it along with all the other muck people did in times of war. "When I fought Ares, he was the man who sacrificed himself so that the Germans could not bomb London. He gave everything so that the war would end."

Bones could see the way her eyes warmed with tears. Buried, sure. But, certainly not healed from it, that was for sure. And she wanted him to keep that secret. "Why haven't you told Jim?"

Diana laughed a bit, shrugging. "What is there to say? He isn't Steve. He is Jim Kirk, captain of the _Enterprise_."

"For us, but for you he probably feels like a ghost."

"I have now had several weeks to remind myself of the distinction. I have done everything I can to see him as his own person."

Bones motioned to the photo in his hand. "You hung onto this thing for 300 years, you can't tell me it's for nostalgia."

"For a long time, it was all I ever had of him." She breathed. "And I spent so long away from Earth that I thought he was my past. But, that is not why I told you."

"Why _are_ you telling me this? Especially since I'm not the one who needs to know." Bones didn't need to say it. He could tell by her conflicted expression that she knew Jim had a right to the information.

"I've had people - godly and mortal - try to use my past against me. Some of them have been… quite insidious. They're willing to play the long game, as it were." There was vulnerability there. Again, Bones really wished he had not been asked to keep her confidence on this. Everything told him that Jim needed to know, and fast. "I can't be sure that this isn't another deception."

Bones balked. "Like what? He's Jim. I've known the kid since he went into the academy, we've spent years together. He's a real person, Diana, same as you and me."

"I know he's real. And I know he's not Steve." She said firmly. She extended her hand, motioning for the photo. When he handed it back, she cast another look down at the relic before putting it back in her jacket pocket. "But, he looks _exactly_ like him and he sounds just like him. And I know their personalities are not the same. Similar, but Jim has..." She seemed to be searching for the words. "It's complicated."

 _Or it's personal and you don't want to talk about it._ Bones thought. _I'd bet good money you've got no idea how you feel about him, either._

"It sounds a bit… far-fetched, that's all I'm saying." He finally conceded, hoping for a bit more gentle touch to a delicate situation. "And I'm... still trying to figure out why you came to me."

That seemed like the right thing to say. Diana's vulnerability disappeared in an instant. For a moment, Bones wasn't sure if he was relieved or disappointed. He wanted to get to know her, he just didn't like the idea of keeping any of this from his best friend. "You mentioned that you have such sophisticated technology that I hoped you could help me ease some of my doubts."

He nodded, mouthing a silent 'Oh' as he understood. "You want to know if he's related to this guy?"

"No. I know he isn't. Steve's family never survived World War II. I eventually looked them up, but the line ended with them." She shrugged. "So, I know he can't be Steve's descendant. The question is, how could he look exactly like him? Is there a scientific explanation, or should I be concerned that there is something more nefarious at work? Perhaps - to you - he's always been Jim, but you don't know what some of my enemies have done."

Bones let out a low whistle as he thought that through. "You're asking the skeptic to tell you that this isn't some sort of magic mumbo-jumbo designed to torture you. Well…" He shrugged. "I can only tell you what I know. "

"Which is?"

He pulled a chair up and took a seat, then motioned for Diana to do the same. When she did, he touched a few buttons on his console and brought up a display. There were two people: They looked nearly identical but they were not related. "It's happened throughout history before. People look almost the same, but they're not related one bit. The genetics are different, the DNA is different, but the pieces all come out the same. It's like baking different pies every day and somehow, one day you get angel food cake and the next day you get pound cake that looks just like your angel food cake."

"So, it's possible that it's… an anomaly. A coincidence." He wasn't sure she was excited about that proposition. _To be fair, what answer would_ _ **you**_ _want to hear, Leonard? Doesn't seem like there's a good outcome to pick._

"You asked for a scientific cause. I'm saying it probably is." Bones paused, debating whether or not to possibly insult her. He chose to go for it anyway. "I'm telling you there's a reasonable explanation. If he looks like this Steve guy, then it's because the ingredients baked in the similar mold, not because of some magic hand of Fate."

She nodded, but otherwise didn't respond. Instead, her hands ran along her bracelets. She probably didn't believe him, but who was he to argue with a woman who said she was the daughter of Zeus? It wasn't his job to figure out all the mysteries of the universe. Just a small corner of them. On occasion.

"Look…" Bones began, then stopped himself, trying to figure out how to phrase this best for her. "Jim's an understanding guy. He gets to know everyone on this ship, and you're no exception. It's just the kind of guy he is. But, if you don't tell him about this and someone else does, it _will_ hurt him." She opened her mouth to reply, but he kept going. "And I am sure you've been able to guess that he's infatuated with you because he does _not_ hide his interest. But, that's not nearly as important to him as making sure that you feel welcome and accepted here. That you feel like part of the family. And if he thinks that you're only here because he looks like your dead ex-boyfriend, he'll back off. He'll think that's what you want and he won't ask you."

"How I feel is not his choice," She said, brow furrowed in confusion. "And an uncanny resemblance doesn't mean that I'm not capable of seeing that he's not Steve - "

"You don't need to tell me that, you need to tell _him_." He insisted. "I'm guessing that's why you came to me. You could have looked this up in our database, but you didn't want to hear it from a computer. You wanted to hear it from someone who's known Jim a lot longer than you. And I'm telling you right now - if you tell him about Steve and you explain why it was so hard to talk about, he will try to understand and he'll certainly respect however you feel." The way her brow furrowed more, he had a feeling she wasn't even sure _she_ knew how she felt. "Whatever that is," He added, hoping that would help.

 _Bones, this is why you're not a damn counselor,_ He thought ruefully. He didn't mind the role, but sometimes, it just made things more complicated. He wanted to help. Hell, if he thought giving her a hug wouldn't have landed him across the room, he would.

"I do enjoy his company." Diana finally conceded. "But, with this doubt hanging over my head, I couldn't let my guard down. And I will tell him. I just need to figure out how." She chuckled, a smile finally gracing her features again. "To be honest, I've found he has a unique skill in steering me out of conversational topics about him that won't involve his career or the Federation at large."

"He's good at that. He likes to learn about other people, but he's not too keen on sharing his own past. He is the definition of curiosity." He said, recalling all too well how long it had taken for Jim to share anything with Carol. And ultimately, that had been one of many reasons why those two hadn't worked out.

"I feel as though I know him, as a person. I know his heart." Diana shrugged. "But, for someone so open…"

" _Security to Sickbay!"_ The general call over the intercom cut their conversation short.

The doctor stood and flipped the switch on the wall to activate the comm. "McCoy here. What's going on?"

" _We have a medical emergency in Crew Quarters! It's Crewman Harper!"_

Bones felt his heart drop into his stomach, exchanging a furtive glance with Diana. "On my way."

* * *

The conversation between them ceased the moment the call had come regarding Harper, but Diana's mind still raced and strove to process and compartmentalize all she and McCoy had discussed. The doctor hadn't bothered to ask if she would stay in the Sickbay; he just assumed she'd want to go.

The two of them were silent on the turbolift ride to crew quarters. Just as well. She didn't know what to say, or how to continue the train of thought they had been on.

Instead, she tried to focus on the key revelations in the few quiet moments before they found out what precisely had happened to the crewman.

It was _possible_ that Jim Kirk was simply a doppelganger. A genetic anomaly where certain genes arranged themselves in similar patterns. Nothing more. It wasn't likely, but it was possible.

But, was that what she wanted?

She would tell Jim. As soon as there was a quiet moment, she would explain their similarities and their differences. She would apologize for what nearly happened in the gardens on the _Yorktown_. She still wasn't sure she knew her own mind. She had learned to treat him as Jim, not Steve, but her heart still raced when she caught him looking at her, and his interest was not just flattering… it was desired.

But, did she want him or Steve?

In a way, it had been a comfort to think he had merely inherited Steve's physical attributes. It meant that there was no god of death or witch boy bringing back this figure from her past to use as a weapon. But, it had been a feeble hope. A wish, perhaps, that Steve had returned in some form.

But, it was _all_ coincidence. Jim and Steve, the Altheans and their likeliness to Medusa. If those could be coincidences, then she gained nothing by holding that information back from Jim. They could never have a truly honest friendship if she held that out of reach. She could let herself… feel. She could make him laugh, they could talk about the mysteries of the universe and she could… see where things could possibly lead.

Maybe.

The turbolift doors opened and McCoy raced down the corridor. Diana followed after, leaving her personal thoughts behind.

Instead, she focused on the destination. Crew Quarters. Presumably, something had happened to Harper while she was off-duty.

"Outta my way, outta my way!" McCoy was saying as he pushed a crowded pack of crewmen out of the way. All uniform colors, all worried faces.

Diana's feet slowed as she reached the group and McCoy disappeared into a doorway with Harper's name on the door plate.

 _Never ignore your gut, Diana. You will feel it in your bones._ Antiope's voice came back to her. Somewhere on Themyscira, in the middle of the night, watching the Amazons leave the offerings to the goddess of magic. She had been a child then. But, she knew the ritual then was the same as the one that had been conducted on Althea. Amazons brought their offerings to Her table and turned away in the dark of the new moon. They never looked back. They mimicked the walk of Orpheus to bring Eurydice from Hades.

To walk from that table was to suggest they were walking from the handmaiden of Persephone, Queen of the Underworld.

 _You will always feel Her touch in your bones. Magic that old chills the soul._

The goddess of Magic had a name. It was one Diana had only spoken once since those old days of ritual. She was worshipped by Circe, the lavender-haired witch who had been lover to Ares himself.

She was the patron of Medusa.

Diana slowly stepped into Crewman Harper's quarters, but felt as though she was treading through water. She came to a halt as she found McCoy hunched over a figure on the crewman's couch.

"I don't believe it…" McCoy was muttering as he ran his tricorder sensor over the figure. "It's not scientifically possible…"

Diana walked closer, stretching her hand out until she barely touched Harper's hand. She had been reaching for her now cold cup of coffee when it had happened.

She had been turned to stone.

Diana had hoped never to speak the goddess's name, but she knew her handiwork. She knew Medusa's curse.

"Hecate." No. The Altheans had only begun to practice the ritual in two hundred years. " _Circe._ " She growled.

McCoy could keep his science. Magic was here.


	19. Torch at the Crossroads: Act III

**Torch at the Crossroads: Act III**

Turned to stone.

Bones had said it was scientifically impossible. It _had_ to be.

Yet, Jim found himself staring at Crewman Harper's prone body, still locked into the sitting position, now in a chair in the back of sickbay. If it hadn't been for the monitors showing her heart rate, Jim would've thought he was staring at a granite statue.

A hand was at his chin as he looked the young woman over, trying to make sense of what seemed unreal. He hadn't checked on her after the away mission. He always made a point to do so, even with the most junior members of the crew. Would checking on her last night have stopped this? He shouldn't have put it off until morning.

Sighing, he rubbed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose as he tried to clear his head. He could blame himself later.

As his chief medical officer rounded the corner, he focused on what he _could_ do. Find a way to fix it.

"Bones, how is it she still has vitals?" Jim's question seemed as loud and startling as a photon torpedo in the quiet sickbay. If it bothered the doctor, though, he didn't let on.

"I have no damn idea, Jim." McCoy's expression was severe simply because of the predicament Harper was in. He checked over a few monitors that still beeped. "Doesn't make a lick of sense. She's stone. If I run a scan, it tells me I'm looking at a human. Nervous system, cardiovascular system, it's all still there. But…." He just motioned to the physical condition of the crewman to finish his sentence. "I took a sample from what _should_ be her uniform and it matches the chemical composition for granite."

"Okay, we have no idea what caused it, but how do we fix it?" Jim asked, trying not to dwell on how utterly bizarre this was. It was always his gut reaction when faced with a mystery. If he couldn't use his phaser or his wits, he'd rely on the expertise of the others on his staff.

"When I figure that out, you'll be the first to know." Bones scowled. "Without a cause, Jim, I'm back in the Dark Ages. I might as well go get a bucket of leeches for all the good this'll do me." He motioned to the hypospray in his hand before setting it down on one of his medical trays.

Jim's expression remained neutral. "You said Diana was with you?"

"She helped me get Harper back here, then took off. She said she needed to do some research."

That didn't sound good. Jim considered grabbing his communicator, but the doors to sickbay whooshed open and the rest of his senior staff filed in - sans Sulu. He had the conn.

Spock entered first, but no sooner than he'd cleared the doorway, Uhura had stepped past him and made her way over to the crewman.

"Rose…" She breathed, brow knit with concern. "Any idea what happened to her?"

Bones shrugged, resigned. "Your guess is good as mine." He nodded to Spock and Scotty as they came around to see for themselves. "I've started a full panel of what tests I _can_ run on the granite, but we're looking at something scientifically impossible."

"Is it possible that this is a more nuanced issue, Doctor?" Spock ignored the exasperated look that Bones threw his way. Just as well. Jim wasn't sure a sparring match with the two of them would improve matters. Most of the time, it was a pleasant distraction. But not now.

"What are you suggesting?" Uhura finally tore her gaze to look over at the first officer. Her friend, her lover, and the only person she probably trusted above everyone else.

"Perhaps Crewman Harper has not been… stricken with this condition, but rather we are perceiving it as such."

"A mass hallucination?" Bones asked, skeptical.

"Yes. It's possible she is comatose and still made of flesh and bone."

Bones shook his head, motioning back to his office absently. "Doesn't track. A spectrometer doesn't hallucinate, and it says it's granite. It's logged in the computer banks that way, too. Hallucinations aren't typically that consistent if they're caused by a psychotropic."

"I think we can assume that this situation is anything but 'typical', Doctor." Spock rebuked, earning a grimace from McCoy.

 _Oh, boy._

"Bones, I think it's reasonable to assume that Uhura could be susceptible to whatever this is," Jim said evenly, forcing everyone's attention back to him and away from the impending snit. "Check her out, rule anything out that you can. I'm going to find Diana and send her here for the same. Immortal or no, we don't know how her physiology works."

"You don't need to do that." Bones cleared his throat. For a second, Jim almost thought he seemed guilty about something. But, whatever it was flickered away before he could call him out on it. "I was taking her vitals when I got the call about Harper. So, with nothing else to compare her physiology to, I have to assume that she's immune or my baseline has already been compromised. I've got a number of tests still running, so there is a chance it will help." Bones sounded a little less convinced that Jim would have liked.

The group fell silent for a moment. Scotty broke the tension, naturally voicing what everyone else was probably thinking. "Here's what I dinnae understand. Harper came back to Engineering after the away mission and seemed fine. No complaints, nothin' out of the ordinary."

"That's a good point," Jim said, considering the events of the last 24 hours. He motioned to his communications officer. "Did Harper do anything differently than you and the Ambassador while you were on Althea?"

Uhura fell silent, thoughtful. She was clearly replaying the entire series of events back before she replied. "Maybe, but not for very long. We met the Althean delegation, went to their banquet and ate. The Ambassador was with the highest ranking officials, I was seated near their clergy, and Rose was with some of their chief scientists. About two or three seats between us."

"So, you were at the same event, but it's reasonable to assume you didn't eat or drink from the same source." He reasoned. When she nodded, he turned his attention back to Bones for confirmation of his theory. "So, she could have been poisoned."

"I don't know how a poison could do this, unless…" Bones trailed off. He looked as if he'd been struck by lightning by whatever theory had suddenly revealed itself. "Unless that explains the scans."

"How so, doctor?" Spock asked.

Bones snapped his fingers and grabbed for his tricorder again. "Could be that I'm reading vitals because she's still _in_ there. A number of compounds on other planets have been found to be benign in the bloodstream or in water, but the moment they reach air, the oxygen forces a chemical reaction."

"You are suggesting this is rust." Spock quirked an eyebrow.

"I'm saying it might be _like_ rust." The doctor ran another scan over the crewman. "Still have no idea how something could look like granite, have the composition of granite, but be able to change from a liquid to a solid, but it gives me somewhere to start. It's a long shot, but it's the only one we've got."

"Then, we'll leave you to it - " Jim began, only to be cut off by the ship's comm chime.

" _Engineering to Sickbay._ "

Bones scowled. "McCoy here."

Jim's stomach turned to ice at the security chief's words. _"We need a medical team to the lower decks, doctor. Two of the crew just turned into… into stone._ "

* * *

The records had been highly classified, by both pre-Starfleet definitions and current security levels. While the senior staff had been busy mulling over the situation with Harper, Diana had followed her gut. She _knew_ the situation, all too well. But, she also knew that upon a ship full of rational, scientifically-minded individuals, it would take more than her word to make them consider what she _knew_ to be truth. It was no scientific affliction. Crewman Harper was stricken with the magic of Medusa's curse.

Somehow, light-years across the galaxy, Diana had been faced with coincidence after coincidence. Only now… now, she was sure they had never been coincidence at all.

She'd had to fight the urge to beat herself up over the misstep the entire time she'd hunted for the A.R.G.U.S. records. If there was any chance of saving Crewman Harper, it started with Diana's past. With Circe.

Obtaining the footage from the attack on Paris had been easy once she determined how to search for such a deeply hidden piece of history. But, that had only given her visual proof of both Medusa and Circe. The significant amount of intelligence she had placed on Watchtower's database… that had been more difficult. It wasn't surprising that during Conner's tenure as Superman, along with the impending war, most of Watchtower's data had been lost when the satellite was destroyed.

But, she had enough to feel certain that somehow, Hecate's greatest acolyte was at work.

Diana had been about to pull her communicator from her clothes strewn on the couch when her door chimed. Moving to stand, she kept her eyes on the computer monitor as she queued up footage. "Come in."

The doors opened. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught the gold uniform and all too familiar gait. "Diana, when the chief medical officer tells you to go to Sickbay, he typically means it." Jim was clearly annoyed. She could hear it in his voice with no hint of amusement. To be fair, she had been ignoring the occasional chirp from the device. In fact, she had absently hoped it would sink between the couch cushions.

"I had to be sure of what I saw." Diana muttered, as if that explained it all.

"No one's sure what happened to Harper, not even Bones." She glanced up just in time to see him rapidly closing the distance between them, but kept at it. "He's been running tests for hours and - why are you wearing your armor?"

"Because this is not a scientific malady." She stood to face him and turned her monitor towards him. "It is a magical one."

Jim gaped at her, mouth working for a moment without any clear goal in mind. It wasn't until he tore his gaze away from her and looked down at the monitor that his countenance shifted to more muted confusion. The image was one of the only few that Amanda Waller's team had caught on camera. Diana had given strict instructions to the leader of A.R.G.U.S. that Medusa's face could never be on camera, else her cursed gaze afflict anyone else who viewed the footage. As a result, the only footage to make it to the records were of the cursed woman from behind. Jim could see the snakes, emerald green and frozen in time, as they writhed wildly. The gorgon herself, cursed for her beauty, bore the golden armor that Circe had gifted her as a tool against Diana.

She could see Jim's brow furrow more when he caught sight of the younger version of the the woman before him now. Diana remembered the white cloth she had bound around her eyes. She had thought she could fight Medusa blind. She could. But, fighting Medusa while Circe interfered… that had proven more difficult.

"What is this?" He finally asked before looking back at her.

"That is the only surviving account of my encounter with the monster Medusa. Her accursed gaze turned any living creature to stone if they looked directly upon her." She knew it would be difficult to make him believe, but Diana had never let doubt stand in the way of truth. "When I lived in Paris, I faced her."

"You killed her." Jim finished, although he sounded distracted. "Right, you mentioned after you got back from Althea."

"Yes, because the Altheans share the same coloring as Medusa. They even style their green hair in braids that mimic the snakes." Diana shifted so that she could switch to another part of the footage as she kept talking. "I thought it was an unlikely coincidence. I do not believe that to be the case now."

"Why?"

"The ritual we witnessed on Althea is identical to the Ritual of Hecate performed by the Amazons - and by extension the Greeks." She kept scrolling, hunched over the desk. "It was _very_ specific and rarely used. We only used it ourselves when a great many Amazons were sent across the River Styx to the Underworld, or when we required great magic." She paused as she found the next timestamp. "Hecate was never one for worshippers, but she was honored as Persephone's handmaiden and the great keeper of magic. Her primary symbols were the torch and key, just like the Althean government uses. I thought it a case of pollution from Earth, but could not determine why. Then, I remembered. They only started practicing this ritual about two hundred years ago. And two hundred years ago…" Diana stood straight and turned on the footage. "I banished Hecate's chief acolyte from the Earth. The witch, Circe."

The image flared to life. The witch goddess Circe in her long black gown. Her hair, lavender and down to her waist, billowed around her as her hands glowed with the magical energy that she had been blessed with by Hecate herself. She cried in an ancient form of Greek - even more obscure than Themysciran - and the bolt of energy blew apart a fountain. Diana had watched the footage several times, but she didn't need to look. She could remember the concrete showering down onto her, bouncing off her shield.

The cameraman shifted perspective to reveal Diana. At the time, she had already killed Medusa. "I could not look directly at Medusa. I tried to use a blindfold, but when it was taken from me, I did the only thing I could: I blinded myself and kept fighting. Even after I killed Medusa, Circe would not rest. She fled this battle in Paris, but I found her in Greece a week later." The image froze, then went dark. "I invoked the gods to banish her, and she disappeared. I thought she was gone, but now to find Medusa's curse visited upon Crewman Harper and Circe's goddess worshipped here?"

"I thought you said the Amazons worshipped this Hecate. Why would she help Circe hurt you?"

"The gods are fickle. And for a time, they were dead. I helped resurrect them in my youth." Diana recalled her folly, the years spent in the 1940s facing the Nazis undercover, only to find that the they had found a vessel to resurrect the gods. All they had needed was Diana's naive and divine touch. "But, as I found out, they are quite adept at speaking out both sides of their mouths. Hecate was not malicious. Circe merely asked for power with no rules and it was granted, in exchange for her soul. It is not a covenant I can break."

With the image gone, Kirk finally turned his attention back to her. "Diana, this is…. This is a lot to take in, and you don't have all the facts - "

She reached out, taking him by the shoulders. "I have all I need, Jim. I am telling you that I can feel the magic on the _Enterprise._ It's been too long, I've been lax in training my senses, but I told you: I am not something your science can explain. Neither is this. Crewman Harper is - "

"Harper is not the only one, Diana!" Jim blurted out.

She froze, shock plain on her features. "What?"

"In the last hour, I've lost 20 crewmembers to whatever this is. It started in Engineering, but it's happening all over the ship with no rhyme or reason."

She released her grip on his shoulders and backpedalled. "It's happening so quickly?" She muttered, more to herself than the captain. "But, Medusa is dead. I killed her myself, so then she must have found the spell Athena used for the curse…" Diana considered how long the _Enterprise_ had been in orbit around Althea before taking off at warp again. "Perhaps she has come aboard already."

"You're not suggesting that some woman you faced down a couple of centuries ago somehow snuck aboard my ship without my systems detecting her, are you?" Jim seemed incredulous, but not nearly as skeptical as she expected.

"If Hecate has blessed her with immortality, then believe me, she likely has a few more 'blessings' that can hide from your sensors." She replied. "And we must return to Althea as fast as possible. I must speak to their Torch and determine if they even know what Circe has done. They may be enthralled. You don't know what she can do, but I have seen it all." Diana tried to ignore the way her heart was racing as she considered the depth of Circe's influence. She had been so sure the witch couldn't hurt or manipulate anyone else. But, they had such history… it had been naive.

"Diana, it's not that I don't want to believe you, but Bones does have a theory…" He stopped as she crossed her arms over her chest, daring him to finish whatever feeble excuse he had. "I mean…. I've seen what you can do. I know who you were to history, I know you who you are now, but this?" He shrugged. "It's out of my wheelhouse." There was a strange resignation in his voice. Almost as if he'd known the moment she started speaking that he wouldn't win an argument. Was that because he believed? Or because he knew there was no point in arguing?

"There are some things that cannot be explained by your science. And perhaps, one day, you will unravel the mystery of magic, but that day is not today." She said, hoping to ease the sting that his doctor might not be able to save them. "For a man who has seen such great things in this universe, how can you not believe me?"

Jim looked at her for a long moment before he finally chuckled. He seemed surprised with himself. "I do. I believe you. I just… this is definitely the furthest I've gone on suspending my disbelief, let's put it that way."

"Good. Then, let's return to Althea - "

He put his hand up to stop her for the moment, shaking his head. "Hang on. I believe that Circe is real, that this may all be related, but we don't know that for sure. Let's go talk to Bones, see if he's made any progress. Even if it's what you consider magic, if we can figure out the science behind it, then that's worth it." He was trying to reason the impossible.

Diana chuckled in spite of herself. Even in spite of the seriousness of the situation.

"If he's still stuck, then we'll go right back to Althea and I'll defer to you and your… extensive knowledge of the arcane." He bent his head a bit to catch her eye and draw her attention back to him. "Deal?"

"Deal." She said, motioning for the door.

As he turned to go, Jim paused as something caught his eye. He was looking at her desk. More importantly…

"Have I seen that watch before?" He asked.

Diana's eyes widened as he reached over, picking up Steve's watch carefully, reverently. Her heart clenched, then began to quicken as he looked it over. For a brief moment, she had the profound sense that the gods were torturing her. Again, she had lulled herself into accepting that his resemblance to Steve was a throw of the genetic dice.

But, now there was magic, and if Circe was turning people to stone…

What if McCoy was wrong? What if there was more to the man before her than she wanted - needed to believe.

Jim was still looking at the watch as an archeologist gently rotating a piece of ancient pottery. She tried not to think of the way his care and curiosity had become endearing to her.

Diana swallowed down her heart from its new location in her throat. "No, I don't believe so."

"That's odd…" He turned it over in his hand one more time. "I just, I dunno, I feel like I've seen it before."

"Maybe you owned a watch like it?" She didn't know why she was asking. She knew it was only going to lead to more inner turmoil.

"No, I've never really taken an interest in antiques." He seemed to be drinking in every millimeter of detail on the timepiece. Yet, Diana couldn't shake the sensation that the watch was _precisely_ where it needed to be. "I take it you've had this for a while?"

Diana was careful to keep her voice neutral. "Yes. It was given to me by… by someone close to me. He died during the first World War."

He set the watch down abruptly, as if he felt like he'd been intruding, but still with all the care a relic such as the watch deserved. "You have my sympathy. Must have been important to keep it with you all these years."

"He is." She corrected herself. "Was." For a brief moment, she considered telling him everything. It was easy to forget the crisis outside those doors. But, she couldn't guarantee that it would do any good. In fact, it would only complicate matters. Afterwards. She would tell him after she found Circe. "I'm sure Dr. McCoy will have found something by now."

The subtle shift from friend to captain wasn't missed. In the blink of an eye, he nodded and turned to the door. The two of them were quiet as they made it to the turbolift, as short as the trip was. But, while Diana was no stranger to companionable silence, there was something off about the lack of noise once they stepped off the lift.

The same deck that held Sickbay also had two science labs and one of the transporter rooms. There had never been a time when Diana didn't see or hear _someone_ in the halls.

Until now.

"It's too quiet," Kirk muttered, concerned. He picked up his pace and gently nudged her to do the same with a hand to her elbow. "Come on, I don't like this."

As their footsteps fell in sync and quickly crossed the corridor to the central hub of the deck, Diana felt that now-familiar itch begin again. It rattled in her bones, it slid down her spine. "Jim…" She breathed as they made it to the doors. She reached for him, a feeble warning for what she knew would be on the other side. "Jim, we're too late - "

He was already inside.

As she passed over the threshold of the door, she felt a sudden wave of heat that gripped her senses. It was as if she had walked into a burning building. It was suffocating and dry. And then it was gone as quickly as it had struck her.

And so was the sensation of lingering sorcery. The sickbay held no arcane residue now. The magic was done. Whether Diana had sensed it leaving, or whether she had simply been out of practice in detecting such things, she wasn't sure. Again, she felt as though she was treading water in the absence of that magical aura as she approached the captain.

She expected to hear Kirk already questioning for a progress report, but he was silent. In fact, he was standing still across from the doctor's desk.

Diana's heart sank. She knew before she drew closer.

Doctor McCoy was still prone over his desk, lips pursed and a granite hand gripping his monitor as he reviewed fruitless test results. The padd and screen had long since gone dark, perceiving no organic lifesign to present the information.

She turned to face the man beside her. His eyes were locked on his friend's face. McCoy was tranquil, but made of stone. Kirk's nostrils flared. There was a brief flash of lingering worry and grief, then it was gone as he blinked and his jaw set.

How many more had been afflicted since Kirk had come to find her?

She gently extended a hand to touch his shoulder, wishing to offer him comfort and to assure him that she would see Circe brought to heel. It wasn't entirely surprising that he turned away before she could touch him.

"We need to get back to Althea." He ordered, marching back out the door.

With a last lingering glance at the doctor, Diana swallowed and followed after him.

* * *

It would take another four hours to return back to Althea at their top warp speed. While the ship had been at low warp speeds to leave, the journey back still would take more time than Diana feared they had.

By the end of the first hour, two hundred members of the crew had turned to stone. The reports came in from every deck, every crew position. No one was safe. People were changed as they ate in the mess hall. Diana had taken a security team - at Jim's insistence - and swept each deck.

When she returned to the bridge an hour and fifteen minutes later, she returned alone.

It never seemed to happen when someone could see them. There was no way to catch the change in action. At an hour and thirty minutes, Uhura had turned to her console after giving her report to the captain. When everyone looked back in her direction, the communications officer had been stricken. Spock had shown as much concern as she expected he could, but there was little to be done.

At an hour and forty-five minutes, Diana herself had to speed across the bridge to catch Spock as he took a step while no one was looking. She barely caught his prone figure before he crashed into the floor.

At the two hour mark, Scotty failed to make his report. Nor did he answer to anyone's attempts to raise him.

Systems began to go down sporadically without individuals to man stations. _Even with such advanced technology, automation has not replaced the living component,_ Diana thought ruefully. After the second time the ship nearly lost life support and Diana reminded Jim she was on the bridge, he steered her to the ops console and quickly taught her the basic functions of the station.

Sulu had to call her over to help with the engineering console as he lost his navigator.

It had now been two hours and fifteen minutes since the _Enterprise_ had made their course back to the planet.

The captain was now at the helm, having slaved engineering to the navigation console.

Diana was attempting to manage life support and the tactical systems - as much as she could understand - from the standing science console near the captain's chair.

The last crewmember to report in had been Crewman Oviedo in the shuttle bay. He was attempting to reroute more power directly from the shuttle bay to keep the essential systems as optimal as possible.

The power never stabilized as hoped, and he stopped answering hails.

For a place so full of light and bright white lacquer… it was more eerie now than it had ever been.

The lights dimmed, not for the first time. Ahead of them both, the viewport gave them a very stark view of their progress. The warp bubble rippled around them as they nearly dropped out of it, then stabilized.

"We're losing speed." She said, hoping he could elaborate on what she'd seen. Or, perhaps tell her she was wrong.

"I know, I know," Kirk's response was hardly the one she wanted, but he stretched over to the navigator position and depressed a few more buttons on the console. "I could try to go down to Engineering, see if we could draw power to stabilize the warp bubble, but without Scotty, I don't know where those overrides are."

"How far is it to Althea if we lose the warp field?" She truly did not think the answer would soothe the sting of knowing that the ship was even dying around them. She only hoped the knowledge would fuel her determination.

"A lot longer. A day or two, easily. And that's providing we don't lose any other systems or get off-course." He remarked, heads down and focused. "How much power is left to the deflector dish? We might be able to sacrifice some of the range if it means we get there."

Diana furrowed her brow and put her new skill to use, toggling through the systems she had access to before she found deflector control. The text that came across the screen didn't help. "The computer is already reporting we are close to the minimum power level and it's still dropping." She rested her hands on the console and leaned forward. "Jim, can the shuttles go to warp? Maybe I can -"

Jim shook his head. "No. I mean, _yes_ , the shuttles can go to warp, but _one_ person can't run a ship."

"If the solution - if _Circe_ is on Althea, then if we never reach the destination, I may be the only one of us left! And I certainly cannot do all of this." She motioned to the bridge around them, then crossed down to the helm. "Jim, unless you can think of something, we may have to come back - "

" _No_." He stood, giving her suggestion his full attention. Those eyes, hawk-like in their determination and stubbornness, bore down on her. "I am not abandoning my crew, I'm not gonna do it. I'm not giving up on the _Enterprise,_ so don't you count her out, either."

"I'm not giving up, but I cannot fight Circe if I cannot find her!" Diana urged.

"I don't believe in no-win scenarios, and neither do you." He reminded her, pointedly using their off-duty conversations against her. "We _will_ find her." Jim turned to pace the bridge for a moment, then spun to face her. " _You'll_ find her."

Diana furrowed her brow. "What?"

"You said you know magic, that _you're_ magic. Maybe we're looking at this all wrong. You don't need to go back to Althea. You need to bring her _here_."

She'd considered the same thing earlier, but she could see no way to summon the witch without old scrolls that were on Themyscira. Diana wasn't a sorceress. "Magic is more than intent, I'm not sure if I could - "

"Diana, we don't have any other options." He said quickly, reaching out to her. "Faith is all about what you believe, and I believe in _you._ So, do something miraculous. Please."

In that moment, she realized that he truly meant what he said. It had been a long time since anyone had ever said as much. And if they had, it had been in her role as the queen or as Wonder Woman. But this was something... else. Something _more_.

She nodded and pulled away from him, making her way over to Sulu's frozen figure in one of the jump seats. "He was the last her magic took. I will use that against her." Unfurling her lasso, Diana wrapped it around Sulu's shoulders and held tightly.

Closing her eyes, she let the world around her fall away for the moment. She let herself be consumed by the silence, used it to focus.

She thought of the witch. Her lavender hair, her violet eyes, and her dark soul. _I am here._ She said to the lingering sorcery in the helmsman's transformed figure. _Find me, witch woman. Find me. I am the God-killer, and I am the one who slew your lover the God of War._ _ **I am here.**_

Someone was clapping. Slowly. Languidly.

"Oh, _very_ good, Diana, I am impressed. Well, marginally."

One goddess turned to face the other. Jim Kirk pulled his phaser and trained it on the new arrival.

Circe had sprawled herself across the captain's chair. Her purple hair cascaded in waves down her chest. She wore the same golden chiton as the Altheans had, but where they had worn simple sandals, the witch goddess bore buskins. While the tops were certainly laced and black leather, the soles bore spiked heels. It was a distinct influence from the woman's time in Man's World. She had not changed at all.

"Did you miss me, God-killer?" The witch purred, her voice husky and full of the natural seduction that once kept Odysseus on her shores and tied Ares to her forever. "Because I _certainly_ missed you."


	20. Torch at the Crossroads: Act IV

**Torch at the Crossroads: Act IV**

Few of Diana's adversaries had been quite as menacing or cruel as Circe. The goddess had been the lover of Ares himself and had been responsible for raising him from obliteration more than once. Over the years, they had fought both clandestinely and out in the open. The goddess of magic had given Circe the blessing of immortality, the power to manipulate the energy in the air around her, and countless other skills. Diana had nearly died facing her. She had always known that there was the possibility she was still alive. Somewhere.

But, she _never_ expected to see her on the far reaches of space, taunting her and draped across the seat of power on the _Enterprise_ as if she owned it.

Diana scowled. "I should have been more specific with my prayer to Athena when I banished you from earth."

Circe laughed, a low rumble. In one of the few times the League had run into her, Barry had said she put the "fatal" in _femme-fatale_. Men and women alike were enthralled by the low, sultry tones. "Oh, yes, I'd say so. If you had wanted me gone forever, I recommend banishing me to the opposite end of the galaxy next time. Not that you'll have the opportunity." She checked her nails, a magically immaculate manicure reminiscent of claws. "I'm sure you know that the gods don't care about any of us anymore. Or you've killed them all."

"I can assure you, if the gods are dead, Circe, I had nothing to do with it." Diana forced herself to remain calm, even with her heart pounding. The woman across from her may have seemed like an easy target, but she held incalculable power in her hands. The goddess Hecate had promised Circe to be the very avatar of her soul. It was probably why Ares had taken interest. "And since I do not see Ares here," Diana motioned around the room. "I have to assume that he is dead or has abandoned you. Neither of which are my doing."

Circe sat up abruptly, nearly flying out of the chair. "You get my husband's name _out of your filthy mouth!_ "

"He was my brother, and he was a killer. I have every right to say his name." Diana took a step closer, even as she caught Kirk also advancing out of the corner of her eye.

"You traitorous bitch, you have no right - " The goddess began, her violet eyes flashing.

"Circe." It was Kirk who decided to break the tension, risking her wrath before Diana could warn him against it. "The only reason you're here is because I asked Diana to bring you here. If you turned my crew to stone, then I'm only going to ask once that you _fix_ it." He clipped the last two words with the time kind of determination he had levied at Romulans and the protestors. "And while you're at it, you can get out of my chair."

The goddess laughed again, throwing her head back and kicking her feet with glee before she turned her full attention to the captain. "Oh, how amusing. What a cute little mortal you are. Do you honestly think you could _make_ me do anything with that little toy in your hand? Would you anger the goddess of magic?"

Diana turned to face Jim, but he was still trained on Circe. There was no bluffing in his body language or tone. "I'm willing to take that chance," he replied.

"Oh, I'll bet you are… _Captain._ " Circe purred, amused.

While Diana knew she could handle anything Circe threw at her (at least she hoped), she felt nothing but dread at the very notion that Jim was now in her crosshairs. For a brief moment, she wondered if Circe had been the one to scheme and set Jim Kirk before her. But, the way she ran her gaze over the captain told Diana one thing: Circe saw a _new_ opportunity before her. Not one she had created herself.

She pivoted the conversation, hoping to keep Circe from scheming any further. "How do the Altheans fit into this? Did they know you would attack their new allies the moment we left?"

Sighing dramatically, the sorceress finally stood and relinquished the chair so that she could stand face to face with the Amazon. "Oh, of course not, Diana. You are the most ignorant goddess I have ever had the misfortune to know, are you aware of that?" Before she could reply, Circe waved her hand and kept going. "They have no idea I'm there. The fact that it felt like getting dropped onto Gorgon Island was… _convenient_ , but not orchestrated. So, I kept quiet and nudged them to worship me through Etaceh." She laughed. "They already gave my patron power, but then I could divert it to me. Which made me stronger." Circe turned her attention back to Jim, sauntering over to him even as she spoke to Diana. "You know something about _belief_ , don't you, Diana? I know you spent your time on Earth keeping your lineage a secret, but this one…" She pointed at Jim. "He knows. I can smell the fealty coming from him."

Jim furrowed his brow, but remained silent. The captain of the _Enterprise_ didn't rise to bait so easily. Nor did he back down when his crew was at risk.

Diana wanted nothing more than to rip her away from him, but until she could understand the breadth of her power, it was foolish to react that way. What was worse: her words made sense. _That_ was what she had felt before she summoned Circe. Jim was giving her faith… as a goddess. He probably hadn't even recognized what he'd done. She'd never known what that boost in power could feel like. _Was this worship the drug my father drowned himself in until Ares stole it away?_

"He's not the one you want. You clearly came here for me." Diana reminded the woman, hoping to steer her away from Jim. "So, now you're here and you've cursed all of these people with Medusa's gaze. Why?"

"At first, I was just going to do it until it stopped amusing me." Circe purred. "But, when I realized you had actually grown to _like_ these mortals, I knew it would hurt you." She shrugged, glancing down at her nails again. "I have to give them credit. That doctor nearly ruined all my fun. I had to turn him early on, or he would have found a way to counteract the curse. The Altheans were right about one thing: _pharmakeia_." She dragged the word out in disdain.

"Medicine _is_ simply potion-making, which means it's magic. Just as they believe. He was onto a solution." Diana finished the thought, momentarily relieved that McCoy had been so close. Her heart sank when she realized it had been too late. "Doctor McCoy is a very talented doctor. He was more than a match for you. Now…" Diana took a step closer to press the issue. "What will it take for you to restore them?"

With a graceful, slow pivot, Circe faced Diana. Her next words were deliberate, measured, and taunting. "A snap of my fingers."

"Great, then I'd appreciate it if you get snapping." Kirk quipped.

"Oh, I'm sure you would," Circe cooed. "And to be honest, if you didn't have Diana onboard, I probably would have just let you all go once my fun was over. But, things have changed." Circe quirked an eyebrow and faced Jim. " _You've_ changed things, Captain."

"Me." Jim repeated, careful to hide his confusion.

 _By the gods, she knows_. The thought crossed her mind before she could shove it down. She was sure the fear flickered across her features as well.

Circe peered deep into those blue eyes, smiling. "Oh, yes. _Captain_." The way she kept speaking the title and not the name was an intentional jab. She was testing Diana. She wanted to know how far they could leave the resemblance unspoken.

"How…" Diana trailed off, but it was too late. The question had been asked, and Circe would choose to divulge or would torture her enemy with the information.

"Ares trusted me with his resurrection, _Princess_. You don't think in a hundred years he wouldn't tell me about the precious mortal that brought you to him? I have seen what Ares has seen, as was his gift to me upon his return." Circe knew _everything_ that Ares had learned of Diana while he was Sir Patrick Morgan. No wonder she had always seemed to know how to strike at the Amazon's heart in their battles. "I only wish I'd thought of this sooner."

"He is not your concern, and he is _not_ who you think he is." Diana said, firmly. She pulled her sword from its scabbard, leveling it on her. "And I am tired of your games. You will release the crew of the _Enterprise_ and you will leave Althea."

"I will do neither!" Circe laughed. "Tell me, who did this? Is he a gollum? Or perhaps you used Gorgon's blood. Did you raise him with unholy magic yourself?" The witch turned her full attention to Kirk and began to circle him.

Jim held his phaser tighter, but to his credit, didn't risk firing on her. Instead, he turned his attention to Diana. "Diana, what is she talking about?"

"Jim, please, I will explain later - "

Circe whirled on them both. She had moved to in front of the viewport, as if a great stage to perform had been presented to her. "He _doesn't know!_ " The goddess howled with laughter, chilling Diana from head to toe. "You haven't told him? Oh, this is _too rich._ And here I was just going to kill him so that you'd have to watch. Just like I watched you kill Ares, trapped on my island, all those years ago in Man's first World War. But, now? That would be all too easy. And I don't think it would make you _suffer_ , not the way I want you to."

"I'm starting to think this wasn't such a good idea," Jim spared a glance over at Diana, concern written on his features, then he turned back to Circe. "You're crazy."

"Sticks and stones, Captain, sticks and stones." Circe purred. Diana felt the magnetic charge in the air as Circe's fingers began to weave intricate shapes at her sides. "I can think of no revenge more sweet than to give you that which the Fates have seen to lock away."

Diana took a step forward, ready to strike. "Circe, don't you dare - "

The ancient dialect of Circe's spell struck Diana's senses so hard her ears rang and her bones ached. The words were old, older than Themyscira, but somehow, she understood them.

Circe's hand rose up, outstretched at Jim Kirk. In a moment, he was pulled off his feet and into her violet, magical grip. Her hand tightened on his neck as her other hand raised high in the air.

" _I seek to bring forth that which the Fates have woven. I summon the Thread of this vessel!"_ Jim seized up in her grip, eyes wide with shock and an assault of magical energy. Circe snarled, invoking the last of the spell. _"See the Tapestry that was your life, James Kirk."_

Circe's hand, glowing brightly with magical energy Diana had seen all too many times, came up to Jim's face and covered his eyes. She forced the dark energy into his mind as if it was nothing. "Time for you to _remember_." She hissed in English as the energy swelled. She hurled Jim across the bridge, watching him land with a decisive thud against one of the consoles.

Diana whirled, the cold fear quickly extinguished by righteous fury. "What have you done to him?!" She shouted, leaping over the helm console and swinging her sword.

A blade of pure magical light met Diana's blow. Circe laughed, all too eager to torture the Amazon. "Reincarnation is a funny thing, isn't it, Diana? The same atoms, the same thread the Fates have woven, all the pieces were _right_ there, but he couldn't see them. Locked away for eternity on his next turn at the spinning wheel, and I just picked a lock forged by Hephaestus himself."

Diana's eyes widened as her enemy confirmed exactly what she had feared and hoped for.

Was it true?

"The only problem is," Circe cooed. "You can't have two lives in the same body. You're going to watch it _rip him apart._ "

Diana screamed and kicked off of the viewport, decking the goddess in the jaw and sending her careening across the bridge.

* * *

His ears were ringing. He felt hot all over. _The core… ship… safe…_ _I'm scared, Spock… teach me how not to be..._

 _The air was thin. Couldn't breathe._ Radiation. _No, the altitude. Deep breaths, steady hand on the trigger._

 _Better to die saving lives…_ No more screaming children. No more mothers without their sons. _Than to live with taking them._

Wait. He wasn't dying.

The ringing in his ears was from whatever psychic attack had just hit him, not an explosion behind him. The texture under his hands was the smooth floor of the _Enterprise's_ command deck, not the wood wrapped in leather from the steering column of a German built airplane.

Why would he even know what that felt like?

He heard Diana grunt and yell something to his right. A battle cry. Something brightly colored streaked above him before crashing into a Science console with a shower of sparks and ozone. _The sound of bullets pinging against something metal nearby._ Jim shook his head, trying to clear the ringing in his ears. He reached up to grab the Navigator's console and pull himself up off the floor. _He gripped the rail of the ladder and pulled himself over the wall of the trench, Diana charging through the No Man's Land some 50 feet ahead of him._ No. No that was wrong. Diana was ahead of him, fighting Circe in close combat on the back platform, shoving the witch into Uhura's comms console.

A wave of nausea hit Jim and he clung to the nav console. His eyes were watering from the pressure in his head. Circe had started speaking in the ancient tongue she had used before, when she touched Jim and sent his brain into a spiral of the impossible. Diana countered by covering Circe's mouth. It stopped the spell, but also earned her a vicious bite.

Diana pedaled back, holding her bleeding hand. Jim reached for his _pistol_ … no… his phaser. It felt at once comfortable and completely alien in his hand. He tried not to think about it too much, but even his muscle memory was in conflict. Thankfully, a trigger is a trigger the universe around, and he fired a shot at Circe.

"My hair!" Circe had pulled herself off the console, the shot grazing her head, "You shot my hair! You son of a…"

Jim ducked as another blast of ozone and light came at him. He could feel the impact into _the brick wall..._ NO! The nav console. Diana launched herself at Circe once more, stopping a second attack. He peeked over the top of the half melted console to see the two goddesses locked in battle. _I have never been more in love… and out of my depth..._

One of the witch's blasts caught Diana square in the chest at close range, and Diana flew across the bridge and into the main view screen, leaving a long crack in the glass. _He needed to get to that plane, but he couldn't do it without seeing her. He'd help her up, tell her how he felt. He wished they had more time._

 **No.** None of that made any sense. This wasn't the tarmac of a German weapons facility. He'd never even been to Germany.

"Diana…" Circe tsked. "Diana, Diana, Diana. You can't beat me. You have none of your little Super Friends. No room to even swing your sword, let alone that lasso." She sounded less confident than Jim could tell she meant to. "I have had two hundred years to plan this, and thanks to those simpletons on that planet, I'm stronger than I've ever been. I don't even have to create portals. I simply think…" Circe suddenly vanished, then appeared on the far side of the bridge, near the spot Jim affectionately considered Diana's. "And I am there."

Diana groaned as she pulled herself up. Jim was between them. He had to help her. He looked around for anything that could help and his eyes landed on a large sheet of paneling that had come off the side of the now half-melted nav console. He reached over to grab it, thinking that if anything it would make a handy shield.

A shield.

Without thinking about it too much, Jim moved around to the front of the console, by his command chair, He looked over at Diana where she stood by the viewscreen and held the paneling in front of him. "Diana, _SHIELD!"_

He hadn't thought of it. He didn't need to. They'd done this move before. He'd seen Antiope do it on the beach on Themyscira, during the German attack. He'd gambled that Diana would know the move in the battle of Veld, when that sniper was picking people off from the church tower and Charlie had given into his shell shock.

She stared at him, wide-eyed for a moment, then bolted forward. He helped push her up and watched her soar over his head and towards Circe. The boost helped her clear the railing of the highest part of the bridge with ease. A boot connected with Circe's jaw so hard that blood spurted from her mouth. She was staggered enough that Diana could grab her by her clothing and shove her into the wall.

Jim blinked as his head throbbed again. The moment of clarity passed and he groaned, dropping the paneling and clutching his head. He couldn't breathe. Why couldn't he breathe? _The water was rising, he was going under. He couldn't move. He was stuck, looking up at the surface of the water._ No, no, that was on the shuttle. He had been on a shuttle, not a biplane. It was all too much.

He gripped idly at the command chair, pulling himself up even as his head pounded. Even though the pain and confusion, he turned to face the two goddesses, watching Circe. "What the hell did you do to me?" He ground out, the words dragged out of him as if he'd been compelled by the lasso.

Circe laughed, bloodied and beaten from a fight he couldn't really remember over the sounds of explosions and shotgun blasts. No, he was on the bridge. He had to focus on that.

"Why are you doing this? Why would you do this to him?" Diana demanded, holding her firmly against the wall.

Circe looked back at Jim. His stomach went cold at the way she seemed to look _through_ him. "I want you to see what it's like to come so close, to wish for the man you love to return to you. To think he will be with you forever." She turned back to Diana. "Only for him to be taken away."

Suddenly, Circe was gone. It was like he had blinked and she'd vanished from Diana's grip. All they could hear was her voice, echoing around them.

" _When you think I've finally left you alone, Diana… I will come for him. I will take any hope you have, for either of them. And_ _ **that**_ _time, you will watch as I bleed hope from you. Drop by drop."_

Silence, save for the consoles sparking and the pounding of his head.

Jim glanced up at Diana as she slowly made her way back down towards him. He had so many questions. Nothing made sense. As she came closer to him, he could feel his fingers itching to take her face in his hands, to comfort her pained expression.

 _You stopped me from killing Ares!_

He flinched at the memory. No, she'd never said that to him. She said that to…

Jim squeezed his eyes shut, trying to ignore how easily the serial number came to him. "Diana… who the hell is Steve Trevor?"

She seemed thunderstruck. He'd never seen that kind of shock before. Except in the trench, as he told her he couldn't help her… Wait, _no_. "Jim, I - "

He shook his head, cutting her off as another memory took hold. "Captain Steve Trevor, Pilot, American Expeditionary Forces, Serial Number 8141921. Assigned British Intelligence - Why do I know that? Why were you interrogating him? Me? I mean, _him._ " He put a hand to his face, rubbing his eyes as he tried to clear his mind. "I don't understand, what did she _do_ to me?"

"Captain?" The voice came from somewhere across the bridge. Sulu. His thoughts zeroed in on the present.

Jim turned, then scrambled over to help his pilot up from the jumpseat he'd put him in a few hours before. "Mister Sulu… I am glad to see you." He hugged him, thankful to see flesh and blood instead of the granite. Judging from Sulu's firm grasp, he was just as relieved.

"Jim?" Spock. He released Sulu and rushed over to help Spock up with a lopsided grin. For a moment, the genuine relief at seeing his crew returned to him was enough. "What has transpired? Did we return to Althea?"

"No," Diana spoke for the both of them. Unfortunately, hearing her voice only made the memories in his head start to vie for attention. "I summoned the goddess Circe here. It was a trap to reach me. Presumably, she has released all of you because she sees fit to… extend her game."

"Magic, Spock." Jim shrugged, the breathless tone in his voice from the nausea he was barely containing. "Pretty sure it was magic."

Spock's quirk of his eyebrow was a relief, a return to normalcy for the moment. "Many primitive cultures refer to science beyond their understanding as magic."

"Yup, and consider it beyond my understanding." Jim nodded. "So…. magic."

" _Engineerin' to the Bridge! Is there anyone there?"_ Scotty's brogue burst through the fog in Jim's brain for a moment long enough for him to smile.

"Scotty! We're all here. How are all of you?"

" _Confused, but everyone's wakin' up. What happened?_ "

"A goddess cursed us and then uncursed us." Jim replied. He knew it sounded crazy, but he didn't care. Why? Did he believe it?

 _Steven. Son. Don't tell me ye believe this rubbish._ Charlie. He'd said not to believe any of it, but then Chief…

 _I believe it's true._

 _He was on the tarmac, watching the fireburst rage on. Ares. He'd been so wrong to doubt Diana._ No, that _wasn't_ him. It was blurring together again.

Jim pulled away from the others to grip at the command chair, trying to catch his breath.

"Captain, are you hurt?" Spock asked behind him.

He shook his head, trying to settle his stomach with a sharp inhalation through his nose. "I don't know."

"You should go to Sickbay." Diana said, reaching out to touch his shoulder. His heart pounded nearly out of his chest at the touch. _He'd been wishing he could kiss her since she'd pulled him out of the water. They were dancing. And it was snowing._ No, it was the blue light of the gardens. Was that him? Or - or was it all just because -

"Yeah…" Jim pulled away abruptly, heart clenching painfully. The memories were wrong, they weren't _his_. "Sickbay. I need to see Bones." He stumbled up to the turbolift, Diana quickly rushing to his side.

"Let me go with you - "

"No." He held a hand up to her. "No, we are not done. But… you're…" He didn't know how else to say it. "You're making it worse." Jim tried to ignore the raw hurt on her face as the doors slid closed. He slid down to the ground, hands at his head as he tried to shove away the images and places that felt _wrong._

 _Who the hell was Steve Trevor?_

* * *

She was making it worse. Diana felt like she'd been hit harder from that statement than by almost anything Circe had said. _Almost_. Because, there was no way to escape the truth.

The witch had pulled at the threads of Fate. Science had not just _coincidentally_ crafted a man who looked just like Steve Trevor. He _was_ Steve Trevor. The _same_ thread of Fate, and Circe had tapped into it, forcing the knowledge of an entire past life into Jim's mind.

Such things should be impossible. They were unnatural. The gods did not make humans to withstand living two full lives. What would it do to him? How could he cope?

She tried not to think about how she had seen Steve in his eyes. When he'd mimicked the same battle maneuver that Antiope had taught all Amazons, she'd seen _something_ that had been crystal clear at that moment. Now, she couldn't place what it was. But, she'd seen Steve. Not Jim.

Diana knew that selfishly, she could have been happy to know that Steve's memories were with him, that there was a chance to see _Steve_. Steve's spirit wasn't in the watch because it had moved on to its next life. And she hadn't sensed it until she had grown closer to him. Jim was meant to be his next thread in the great tapestry. Those similarities were _meant_ to be there.

But, knowing what it might do to Jim terrified her. For the first time since she had met James Kirk, she suddenly felt it: Where he had taken place in her heart, now a great void from the fear of losing him. Not Steve. _Jim_. If he was lost to her… because of her past…

Diana spent a few minutes on the bridge to collect herself, but found it was impossible to focus. She had to know if he would be all right. She had to know what - precisely - he knew.

* * *

By the time she reached Sickbay, Jim was nowhere in sight. Neither was Doctor McCoy. She didn't expect him to still be at his lab desk, but she had hoped he would have already been running diagnostics on him.

The doors shut behind her and she caught the sound of raised voices from Leonard's office.

"When the hell were you planning to tell me this?!"

"I wasn't, Jim! She was gonna do it herself. You think I wanted to keep it from you?"

"No, of course not! But, you should've said something! I have a right to know!"

"I found out twenty damn minutes before Harper was turned to stone! It's not like either of us had the time!"

Diana winced as she heard every word of the argument behind the closed door. McCoy had reached a fever pitch, clearly exasperated. She didn't know how the argument had started, but she had a fairly good idea. Before they could continue, she made her way over and rang the door chime a few times.

After a moment, the door opened to her. McCoy had his hand on his console, presumably because he'd been the one to let her in.

Jim shook his head, glaring at his friend with his hands propped on his hips. He opened his mouth as if to say something to Bones, then thought better of it. Instead, he glanced back her way and finally just nodded. "Diana." He sounded distant. Was that from the jumble of memories or because of her?

"I take it Leonard told you what he and I spoke about." She said, hoping to pull the blame away from the doctor. "I asked him to keep it to himself until I could speak to you about… about Steve. Please don't be angry with him."

Jim shook his head again, taking a deep breath. "This is… not a good time, Diana. I told you - "

"I know what you told me, but I have to know that you're all right. Circe did this to you because she wanted to hurt me." She could tell he was angry. His shoulders were tense, his expression was… haunted. Had that been because of her? It hadn't occurred to Diana until she saw his face again what it was that Steve had that Jim lacked. No, it was the other way around.

Steve had been a man without hope, without child-like wonder when she met him. Those were the two qualities that had endeared her to Jim Kirk more than any other.

Jim's eyes no longer held that. He seemed worn, tired. A man who had fought a war. _The_ war. She had taken that hope from him...

"I should never have come with you." She blurted out without thinking. She felt her heart aching for him. "I've done this to you, and now I don't know how to help you. If I had stayed on Themyscira, she never would have taken interest in you and you would have been fine - "

"Diana, I'm not - " Jim paused (or was that one of Steve's mannerisms?), holding a hand up to silence her as he reconsidered what he wanted to say. "I don't blame you for Circe. That's on her. She did it because she wanted to, it's not like you could have known what she would do." For a moment, she felt relieved. But, then he added, "But, you _knew_ that I looked like Steve Trevor." His tone suggested that he was beginning to accept the possibility, and he didn't appreciate the surprise.

She swallowed. "Yes, I did."

"And you've known since the moment you pulled me out of the shuttle. Like you pulled me- _him_ out of the plane."

Diana pursed her lips, her gaze drifting to the console beside her. "The resemblance and the similarity of those events was not lost on me."

"And that's why Menalippe didn't like me. She knew, too. She was there. On the beach." Jim took a step closer and lowered his head until he could catch her eye. "When the Germans attacked." She couldn't tell if he was reigning in his temper for her benefit or for McCoy's, but she had an inclination it wasn't for her.

"Yes." It took more of her resolve than she wanted to admit to keep eye contact with him. "And for a moment, I thought you might be him. But, the moment I met you, I knew you were your own person."

He frowned. "That's not entirely true. You told Bones you were worried I could have been a tool for your enemies."

Diana closed her eyes, recalling her early time on the _Enterprise._ "Jim, please believe me when I tell you that I haven't felt that way for some time. Not since you helped me with Vanessa. Maybe before then, I'm not quite sure. But, you have to understand. Steve died in 1918. His family line died with him, and I had been away from earth for two centuries. I had no idea what had truly happened. It is why I went to Doctor McCoy in the first place." She motioned to the doctor, who threw his hands up, not keen to get into it. "I wanted to believe that you were Jim Kirk and that the resemblances to Steve were just a scientific accident."

"Fine, fine…" He rubbed his face with his hands, then stepped past her to leave McCoy's office. She tried not to bristle at the fact that for a man who had wanted to keep incredibly close to her, now he couldn't seem to run away fast enough. That was _not_ Steve. This was no different than him retreating from the mess hall or from her in the gardens. Definitely Jim Kirk.

Diana followed him into the main sickbay, silently grateful that McCoy didn't follow.

This conversation had been long overdue. Between them. "I had every intention of telling you after this was over -"

"Oh, you did? That's good, because that conversation's only a few _months_ overdue." He snapped, his back to her. He didn't want to look at her. Or maybe couldn't. "Did you _ever_ see me as anything but a replacement for him?"

"That's not what happened!" She protested. But, even she knew that she was lying. It turned to ash in her mouth. There had been moments where it had been easy to fall into that trap. She didn't know where her affection for Jim began and her longing for Steve ended… Diana forced herself to press forward with the real truth she could offer. "I made every effort to get to know _you_ , Jim. And the more time passed, the more I wanted to tell you. When you found your watch - "

"It's not my watch!" Jim burst out suddenly, turning to face her. "That's _not_ my watch, that's _his_ watch! Just like these are _his_ memories, and I can't - " He stopped himself, clearly distraught that he'd yelled at her. His hands went to his head again before he finally had fistfuls of his hair. "You have _no_ idea how this feels. How could you?" He breathed, clearly struggling to make sense of it. "I have memories that are for _you_. I shouldn't know how it felt to dance with you in the snow, how it felt to sleep by you on a boat somewhere in the Mediterranean. Those belong to Steve. I'm not him. I'm Jim. I remember my family, and this is like... " Jim finally ran out of steam, his hands finding the biobed near him to brace on and abuse instead of his scalp. "It's like nothing I've ever experienced." She could hear Steve's hopelessness. _It's like the world is gonna end… "_ Like a waking nightmare where I was someone else, but it all feels so real and I _know_ it's not me."

She felt a lump in her throat and tried to swallow it down to no avail. Her heart felt like someone had twisted it until it bled. "I… I want to help you, but I don't know how." She finally said, at a loss. This was magic far beyond her control.

Jim dug his nails into the biobed's leather padding before he managed to ask her, "Can you fix it?"

She furrowed her brow, confused. "Fix… how?"

He turned to face her. "Take them out of my head. They're not mine, I shouldn't have them." When she paused to consider the request, her expression must have shown the disgust and sorrow that she felt at the very idea. He moved closer to her, slipping his hands to her face as Steve had done all those years ago. "Please, Diana, I shouldn't…" He swallowed, tortured. Even as he asked for her to undo the magic, he pulled her closer, drawing every emotion that she had felt for both of those men to the surface. "You have no idea how hard it is to remember how you smell, how you _taste_ …" She shuddered, overwhelmed by a sense of _need_ from him that sent a shudder through her. "I have no right to those things. You haven't given them to me, they belong to him." When she found herself unable to answer him, he pressed his forehead to hers, holding her close and begging. "Please, Diana. _Please_ , I'm going to go out of my mind."

It took everything in her to quell the conflicting swell of emotions that threatened to overwhelm her. Jim was suffering, pleading. Yet… She reached up, slowly taking his hands in hers and gently guiding them away from her face. "I can't," She whispered, at a loss.

"What?" He searched her face for the answers, as if that could cool the raging fire that was his mind. "What do you mean you can't?"

"Jim… I seek the truth. I am a goddess of _truth_." She gently squeezed his hands before she carefully guided them back to his sides and let go. "I cannot take back the truth. Once it is known… it's absolute. I'm sorry. That's not something I can do. You _are_ … you _were_ Steve Trevor. You were never meant to know. The gods do not intend for humans to know that much of their past lives, but… now you do."

As the realization finally came to him that this was not a problem she could solve, he took a few steps back, straightening. For the first time in the last hour, he resembled the captain of the _Enterprise_. Any affection or hope had disappeared for the moment. He looked… heartbroken.

"I see." He said. The sense of loss that came with the sudden distance felt like a physical ache. He wasn't just walking away, she could feel him withdrawing emotionally. _When did I let him get so close?_

"Jim, please, in time, maybe you can - "

"When we get back to the _Yorktown,_ you are getting the hell off my ship." He finally said, his tone lethal in its professional, distant way.

Her heart sank. The damage had been done. "You don't mean that -"

"You're the goddess of truth, so I guess you know better than me what I want, right?" He snapped as he turned to go. "It's not like you asked my opinion before."

"We can figure this out. I _will_ find a way - "

"If there's no magical solution, then we need to find a scientific one. It nearly worked with the curse, it can work here." Jim spoke over her feeble attempt to comfort him, then stepped past her. He paused at the office. "Bones, we're on our own for this one. Let me know when you've figured out how to…" He faltered. Diana couldn't read his expression to tell why. "How to fix this. I'm going back to the bridge."

"Like hell you are!" Bones shouted, but before Diana realized he intended to stop Jim, the Captain was gone. McCoy came running out of his office only to find a very shaken Diana still staring at the door. "Diana… hell. Darlin', how are you holding up?"

She glanced over at him, blinking away her momentary stupor. "I'm… I'll be fine, Doctor. I'm worried about Jim."

"So am I." Bones murmured in a way that suggested he had more than just an argument with the captain. "I ran some tests before he figured out I knew about your friend."

"And?"

He sighed. "He told me what that crazy lady said before disappearing… and she's right." Bones walked over and handed her his medical padd with Jim's open file. "Somehow, he has two completely different neural patterns in his brain right now. I don't know how long until he starts showing other symptoms, but we have two weeks, and that's being optimistic, before the lethal seizures start. If we can't find a way to fix it…"

Diana's hands shook with rage and fear, helpless to save Jim from the truth.

"He'll die."


	21. Song for Eurydice, Part 1: Teaser

**Song for Eurydice, Part 1: Teaser**

 _Chief Medical Officer's Log: Stardate 2264.65_

 _It's been five days since the Enterprise encountered the, ah, being known as Circe. According to classified Federation logs and from Ambassador Prince's testimony, she's been a thorn in the woman's side for a long damn time. Since she undid her granite whammy on everyone, the crew has shown no side effects from the affliction. Just in case, I've sent my findings to Starfleet Medical in the hopes that should something like this happen again, we're ahead of the curve._

 _The crew, for the most part, are back to their usual selves. They're not the ones I'm worried about._

 _I'm not entirely sure what to do about Jim._

 _The captain's insisted that he be cleared for duty, even though he's clearly suffering from a neurological affliction that is endangering his life. Problem is, I don't have the first idea how to treat him. There's remarkably little about this sorta thing - go figure - in Starfleet Medical's databases. Two neural patterns, one stacked right on the other… That ain't natural. My only hope was in researching other telepathic species, but so far, nothing._

 _Starfleet has recalled us back to the Yorktown, but even at maximum warp, the trip is several days away. Hell, it took us two days just to repair the bridge. I tried confining Jim to quarters, but he was stir-crazy without anything to do but think, so I just let him go to the bridge. Spock knows he's to alert me if he makes any questionable command decisions, but we haven't run into any trouble so far. In fact, the only time the captain seems to be doing all right is on the bridge. So, I'm reluctant to kick that hornet's nest. If he can keep it together until I find a solution, I'd rather him be there with his crew to support him rather than losing his damn mind in his quarters._

 _Unfortunately, while that means Jim is able to focus on being_ _ **Jim**_ _, it's taken a toll on Diana. Course, she won't say anything, but it's obvious to anyone who looks at her that she's about as put out as a stray cat in a thunderstorm. She hides it well enough, but the only way that the captain's found a way to control himself is… well, by avoiding her._

 _And it's not just him trying to avoid a painful subject, either. I completed my last round of neurological scans on him this morning and asked Diana to come in for a few minutes. Sure enough, the moment he saw her, the second neural pattern went nuts. He was talkin' about some lady he thought he knew from England._

 _The fact is, until I can figure out how to help Jim, the best thing he can do is to stay away from Diana. But, I'm worried about the toll it's taking on her. It's bad enough he looked like her old lover, but for him to have all those memories and know they're not his? That's gotta be torture. She wants to help him, she's all heart. But, I don't think she's considering how much pain she's been hanging onto. I tried to help, but something tell me I ain't the kind of medicine she needs._

 _At this point, I'm open to any suggestions. Maybe I shouldn't have been so quick to make that crack about the hand of Fate. Because, truth be told, we need the nudge in the right direction. I don't know how much longer he can keep it up…_

* * *

Winter was already at home in Belgium. The forest was cold enough in the evening, but the sun had gone down long before they arrived. The night chill strung at his cheeks.

He was alone as he came upon the campfire, save for the tall Native American tending his soup pot. He could smell the wood smoke, hear the crackle of kindling. He could hear the mortar shells as they exploded somewhere beyond the horizon.

" _Chief?"_ He asked.

" _You're not supposed to be here."_ Chief replied, but didn't turn to face him. He kept his back to him, stirring the soup pot. _"Then again, I think that's why I like you, James."_

He stiffened, then made his way closer to the fire. He knew this place, he knew the time. It was his, and yet it wasn't. _"Where are the others? Sammy? Charlie. Diana…_ " He turned to face the darkness behind him. Anxiety with the ferocity of a wave crashing upon the shores of a beach he'd never been to, yet intimately remembered. Not seeing her here made the loss more poignant than in his waking hours. Hang on. _Waking_ hours.

" _That's exactly why they're not here._ " Chief answered the unspoken thought. _"They're not meant to be. They've moved on, like you were supposed to move on from here. No longer Steve, but James. Only you didn't, so I thought I'd see you myself."_ Chief tapped his soup spoon on the edge of the pot. _"Dreams such as these are a special gift to my people."_

" _What kind of dreams?"_ He turned back to face the man at the fire.

" _The kind that need a guide."_ Chief took a seat on a log behind him. He motioned for the man staring at him to take a place across near the tent. _"You have a long journey ahead of you. Where you need to go, some people can't follow."_

" _What sort of journey?"_ He took a seat across him, the firelight dancing across their features. Again, his heart throbbed anxiously. _Diana. She should be here. I should find her._

" _That's the question, isn't it? Is it a journey of the mind? Or of the heart?"_ Chief pulled his gloves off and brought his hands closer to the crackling flames. _"Your doctors can't help you. Diana can't help you. But, we can."_

He furrowed his brow. _"... 'We.'"_

" _You have to make a decision, James. It won't be an easy one. All of this…"_ As if by design, the mortar shells rumbled louder in the distance, followed by machine gun fire. _"You don't have to walk here forever. You can leave it behind."_

The world suddenly flashed around them. Light threatened to engulf him before it dissipated as quickly as it had arrived. Everything had changed.

Chief was gone. The forest was gone.

He was in a… a store. A quick glance in a mirror to his right revealed a blue suit and trenchcoat. Early Earth. _Sack suit and fedora…_ He heard himself rattling off the names as if they were second nature to him. But, maybe they were?

Footsteps behind him. He whirled, faced with a curly redhead that he knew instantly. _"Etta."_

" _You don't have to be here, you know."_ She said, smiling so widely she could light up the room as she pat his chest affectionately. _"You could go back to your life. We'd just see you off and all."_

" _I don't understand."_ He muttered. He knew - in the way that sometimes he was both observing and experiencing a dream - that he had a look of befuddled amusement on his face.

" _It would be all right. If you chose to go. Only thing is, it means you can't keep all of us. You have to throw the baby out with the bathwater, as it were."_ Etta crinkled her nose in disgust and picked lint off his vest. _"Can't say I like that idea too much, but it's not really my choice, now is it?"_

He focused on a group of patrons. All in Edwardian dress, only… in their uniform colors. Uhura stood admiring a fountain pen in a red dress with a pillbox hat. Beside her, Spock was in a blue suit as well.

" _Spock."_ He called, hoping to gain the much needed clarity his vulcan friend could offer.

His first officer refused to answer or acknowledge him. He strode forward, realized something was in his hand. Looking down, he realized it was Dr. Poison's journal. But, how was that possible?

" _How did you persuade him to keep your secret?"_ Spock was ignoring him to carry on a conversation.

He didn't expect the person to reply to be _Ambassador Spock._ He was dead, wasn't he? But, wasn't that the whole point? So was Steve.

" _I inferred that universe-ending paradoxes would ensue should he break his promise."_ Ambassador Spock conversed with his younger self as if they were sipping dry martinis in a bar.

" _I don't understand."_ He said as the two Vulcans turned to face him.

Younger Spock simply replied: _"A person cannot be in two places at once."_

" _But…"_ He trailed off, confused.

He heard footsteps again. He turned towards the changing area. He knew what came next, he knew _who_ would come next. His heart, completely committed to the events and emotions around him in the subconscious world, rose in his chest as he waited for her to walk around the corner. His anger, the heartache, it all vanished in the face of the dream's promise that Diana would be here.

But, she never walked around the corner. Time stretched. People slowed around him. He turned to ask Etta what was happening, but she had left him.

Instead, standing at the counter with spectacles and mirrors, Hippolyta stood. It was impossible, as she was dressed like one of the many Edwardian ladies in the store. Her piercing eyes may have been behind a pair of glasses, and she wore a black skirt and white button down, but she was still queen of the Amazons. But, more importantly, she was smiling. And it was a smile that spoke of warmth and friendship. It was a feeling of welcome she'd never extended to him. But here, none of that mattered. He found himself walking towards her.

" _You cannot do this alone."_ It was strange. He could tell she was trying to say his name, but he couldn't hear it. Her lips said one thing, the sounds said another, and so none of it made sense. _"She will never walk through that curtain. You can never see where that road will take you if you don't take the journey. Great reward comes to one who can be called Champion. But, there is great risk."_

He frowned. Anxiety and frustration thrummed through his veins again. _"What journey? What am I supposed to do?!"_

She reached across the table, cupping his face in her hands as she had done to her daughter on the beaches. _"Go to Delphi."_

* * *

Jim startled awake, shooting straight up as the sheets clung to his clammy chest. He glanced frantically around the room, searching for the people, the places, signs that any of it was real. It had been a dream.

He'd felt every emotion, every sensation as if he'd been there.

Slowly, he laid back down, a hand at his forehead as he tried to process. The images were fading quickly. People were starting to drift away as sleep threatened to overtake him again. As he finally closed his eyes, he exhaled softly and muttered something.

* * *

Half a ship away, Diana tossed and turned in her bed. The same word plagued her, beckoning to her.

"Delphi."


	22. Song for Eurydice, Part 1: Act I

**Song for Eurydice, Part 1: Act I**

Diana, Queen of the Amazons, Ambassador of the Federation, Wonder Woman, and Champion of Themyscira, prided herself on exercising restraint and patience, even in the most trying of circumstances.

She didn't know if she could live up to the standard she held herself to on this day.

The revelation that Jim Kirk was Steve Trevor's reincarnation, in body and soul, had swept the rug right out from under her and left her reeling. She'd spent the last few days questioning _every_ interaction they had. How much of her desire to trust him had been because he reminded her of Steve? Would she have still found herself willing to be charmed by Jim Kirk if he'd looked like someone else? Would her heart still have fluttered and occasionally reminded her of how intense those same blue eyes could be staring at her from across the room?

She wanted to think better of herself. Diana was genuinely personable, but more reserved than Jim was. In many ways, he also reminded her of Sammy and Barry: chatterboxes with hearts of gold. So, to some extent, she could find comfort in that fact. Jim was his _own_ person. She had known as much before this information had been thrown in her face.

But, if she couldn't speak to him about it, how would she be able to move past?

It had been a week since Circe had left her mark on the captain of the _Enterprise_ , and in that time, she'd only seen him for maybe an hour altogether. He was avoiding her. _Quite deftly_ , she thought, begrudgingly impressed.

First, the repairs to the bridge meant all non-essential personnel were to remain off of the deck. Even Diana was willing to admit that as an ambassador with no understanding of hardware repairs in this time and place, she wouldn't be able to help. Dr. McCoy had been too focused on Jim's condition and any latent side effects from Medusa's Curse to study Diana's vitals, so she had found herself at loose ends on that front as well.

She had hoped she could speak with him when the doctor finally called her during one of Jim's physicals, but, he'd suddenly started babbling about Etta and how she worried over nothing.

And as far as she knew, he had not changed his mind. When they reached _Yorktown_ in a few days, he would want her off of the ship. She couldn't help him if he wouldn't at least let her stay. She didn't know how she would get though to him if he continued to avoid her, but she refused to simply give up and leave.

Diana's heart ached as she tried not to think too much about the effect Steve's memories had on him. This _was_ torture. To see him was to remind her that she still needed to understand her own mind around him, but it threatened to overwhelm his mind and put him at risk. She had only tried to spare him the doubts that now plagued him. _You only wanted to spare yourself the pain of trying to project Steve onto him. You know you would never forgive yourself…_ She could not even force herself to be angry with him. She knew that this was her failure.

Jim was the cure to her unease. She only twisted the dagger in his mind.

Unable to reach him, unable to help him, Diana had done the only thing she _could_ do in the meantime. She searched the databases for every byte of intelligence, great or small, that still existed on the foes she had faced in her youth. For many of the villains she'd faced, death had come from old age or as a casualty of the Eugenics War. But, Diana had to admit that there were names that had simply… not appeared.

People that she felt like she should have been able to find copious information on, but couldn't.

Queen Clea had disappeared after the war, most likely due to a pullback by Arthur and Mera. When Atlantis had isolated themselves from Man's World during the war, Clea had probably made a play for the capital. Cheetah, once an archaeologist named Barbara Ann Minerva and an old friend of Diana's, had last been sighted somewhere in Bwunda, the Okarango region. If she was still alive, she was most assuredly still cursed by the old god Urzkartaga. But, Diana doubted it. The god had cursed Barbara Ann with many things, but immortality had not been one of them.

Trying to search for gods was impossible, even with the few aliases and standard disguises she knew some of them used.

But, the name that she couldn't seem to find bothered her more than it probably should have. Veronica Cale. The former CEO of Cale Pharmaceuticals. She had been the definition of a self-made woman and - for reasons Diana never quite understood - resented Diana's position and power. She'd worked with many of Diana's enemies and no matter the charge, it didn't stick.

Which was why it was suspicious to her that a woman of such renown had not lasted the annals of time to make it to the Starfleet database.

So, she pivoted to start combing through any ancient text that still remained in the Federation Archaeological database, but that had proven just as difficult. She could find a myriad of references to reincarnation and past life regression, but the truth of the matter was that the affliction Jim had been struck with did not coincide with how the Greeks had traditionally believed in the afterlife.

It wasn't to say that Elysium or Tartarus were the only two options, but the Fates held many secrets in their loom and wheel that no one had learned. Not even the Amazons.

Bruce would say she was spinning her wheels, and that if she couldn't solve the problem, it was time to step away for a moment.

And he would have been right.

Diana couldn't remain cooped up in her quarters or bouncing between Sickbay and the Observation Lounge in a futile attempt to find Jim, or at the least, some sense of peace. For a moment, she considered if sleep could be a sufficient distraction, but she hadn't felt rested in days. Every time she woke, there were words and images that left just before she could commit them to memory. A place…. Vibrant colors and a woman…

Why did her mind want to steer her towards a temple that she had never visited? It had been before her time. _There is no Oracle, there is no temple. Delphi is but a city now._

What she wouldn't have given for a chance to spar with Kal again on the shores of her island…

Her door chime was a welcome distraction.

It chirped once, then again, before she rose from her desk and strode over to the door. Tapping the panel, the doors whooshed open to reveal an officer in a gold uniform. Her heart twisted, conflicted, as she recognized that this was _not_ the officer she'd hoped to see. Yet again, she could see everyone _except_ Jim.

Lieutenant Sulu smiled brightly at her, as if he didn't have a care in the world, then waved. She caught the singular silver band of his rank on his uniform sleeve as he did so. "Ambassador. I hope I'm not interrupting."

To her credit, Diana showed nothing less than enthusiasm to see him. She knew it would have been so easy to let her concern for Jim color everything, but if his crew could carry on with smiles, then she had to as well.

"Lieutenant, please, call me Diana. I'm not on duty." She said with a smile.

"Then, call me Hikaru. I got chased off the bridge by the captain. He said I needed to go stretch my legs and get away from my console." Sulu crossed his arms across his chest as she spoke. "So, I thought I would take the opportunity to see if you were busy."

Diana chuckled, thankful for the distraction. It was good to know Hikaru had wanted to get to know her better and that she'd warranted some of his precious off-duty time. "I'm flattered. Please, come in."

"Actually…" He winced a little, as if embarrassed even through his light tone. "I was kind of hoping that we could talk elsewhere."

She didn't know much about the helmsman outside of their few conversations when she had first arrived, and many of those conversations had been with Chekov, so the ensign had dominated them. But, she did know that Hikaru was married and had a young daughter.

And that he loved to fence.

"You want to spar." She finished the thought before he even had an opportunity to elaborate.

The boyish grin on his face suggested that Hikaru needed the distraction as much as Diana. In truth, if Jim could not accept her help to sort his own mind, then it probably meant he had pushed away much of his crew. She couldn't help but recall McCoy's accurate assessment of the captain: He didn't like to share his skeletons with anyone.

"Yes, I want to spar." He said eagerly. "I've heard the stories from the captain about how you took down those Romulans. And you said it yourself, you've studied every form of combat on Earth. I want to learn from the best, and you're the best."

She rolled her eyes and propped a hand on her hip in a playful challenge. "I have no desire to send you to the Sickbay today, my friend."

"Ah, but fencing's all about being fast." Hikaru quipped back. "And besides, we never know what we're going to run into out here. Learning from you may help me, I don't know, with a Klingon or a Gorn or something." He was playful, but there was truth in what he said. As she had found since Circe's arrival, her instincts were more in tune. She would need to keep them honed, so noting his honesty helped her remember how it felt to sense it.

She chuckled and shrugged. "Very well. If you wish to be beaten so badly - "

"I would appreciate a _little_ bit of a leniency as we get started - "

"Then, yes." Diana conceded. "I would be glad to teach you what I can."

Diana decided then that when Hikaru Sulu smiled, one of two things would happen: someone had won his friendship… Or he was planning mischief.

She determined it must have been the latter.

* * *

An incredibly sore arm and an hour later, Hikaru was questioning his decision to ask Diana not to go too easily on him. While he really wanted to learn from her, he was fairly certain he should have picked a different day to do it. The moment the two of them started the quick-footed dance of a match, she would lose herself in the battle and Hikaru's teeth would rattle from the impact of some of her blows.

Fencing was all about touches, not impacts. He was glad that he had spent a few years to expand his training with the security officers, but Diana really was just… a superhero. He couldn't describe it any other way. He was studying with a master swordswoman and he didn't have time to absorb it all.

Well, his arm was absorbing plenty, and most of it was concussive force.

Diana had begun working with the rapiers that Sulu provided, but he could tell it wasn't her preferred style of combat. He wasn't all that surprised and had expected as much. Unfortunately, his misstep was in allowing her to choose the next set of swords, at which point she pulled a broadsword for each of them.

That was when the force became more punishing, and Hikaru was trying to figure out how to suggest that they take a break without giving her the impression that he couldn't handle it.

Diana swung at him again and he barely managed to get his sword up to block in time. Hikaru shifted back, then pivoted and pushed the blade away before pressing with an attack of his own.

He opened his mouth to say something to her, but nearly got walloped with the flat end of the blade in his backside before he rolled out of the way.

"Okay…" He finally conceded with a laugh. "I think I might not be qualified for this level of difficulty." Hikaru got back up to his feet and walked over, handing Diana his sword with a slight bow of his head. "I appreciate the lesson, but my arms will be sore for a week." He was competitive, but not a masochist. He would be replaying those matches for days now.

She chuckled and quirked an eyebrow. "I _did_ warn you…"

"I know, I know." Hikaru sighed as he made his way over to a bench where his uniform shirt was neatly folded along with hand towels to wipe sweat off of his brow. "I just didn't realize quite how differently you fight."

Diana followed after him and rummaged through one of the cargo containers until she found a bottle of water. The _Enterprise_ didn't have a formal gymnasium for this sort of combat training, so the crew had taken the time to stock this part of Cargo Bay 2 with water bottles and equipment. It was a small haven in the vast ship that offered stress relief. There seemed to be so little for that in Starfleet.

That was a poignant reminder for Hikaru as to why he had dragged Diana out of her quarters. The crew was worried about her, on top of worrying for the captain, and he had to hope that he'd helped her in some way. So far, a physical match hadn't done much to make her open up. And she didn't speak enough during a fight to wage that war on two fronts.

Hikaru toweled his neck and shoulders off. The standard issue tank top he wore would need to be washed, so he didn't want to put his uniform back on until he'd had a chance to get back to his quarters. Out of respect for Diana's sense of smell, he made sure to keep a wide berth as he looked over at her and debated how he could engage her in conversation again.

"You don't talk much in a fight." He finally offered as a way to open the floor.

Diana polished off an entire bottle of water before replying. "Talking draws your focus away from the fight, and can lead to letting your guard down." Her gaze drifted away from Hikaru for a moment. Judging from the nostalgic smile on her face, he assumed she had brought herself back to Themyscira for a moment. "When I was a child, I used to escape my tutors so that I could watch my sisters fight. There was very little chatter on the field. I was enthralled."

"Well, you were part of a warrior culture." He said with a shrug, shifting so he could take a seat on the bench.

"I was, but I was also the princess of the Amazons. My mother wished for me to be different from my sisters." She moved to do the same and settled beside Hikaru. "It did not occur to me at the time, but she was trying to protect me from Ares. She knew that if I trained, learned how to tap into my inner strength, it could awaken the great power simmering within."

Hikaru nodded, not entirely sure how to respond. On a practical level, he and the rest of the crew had come to accept the idea that Diana was incredibly long-lived and part of the Amazons of mythology. He could understand that she was Wonder Woman from the records that existed in Starfleet's database, but… there was an aspect to her divinity that still seemed so far-fetched. It was one thing to accept telepathic species and molecular changes to a person's DNA or surroundings. It was another to accept the idea that Diana was something… divine.

Sulu was an astrophysicist. He left this kind of debate for wiser people. He could certainly get behind the idea that people were capable of more than they thought they were, and he didn't need to understand Diana's power to understand her compassion and soul.

"My aunt, Antiope, trained me herself." Diana continued. Sulu's reverie had only helped spurn her on. "She was the greatest General my people had seen. The diadem I wear when I am in my armor, it was hers."

"Was?" Hikaru noticed the way her voice trailed, the heaviness. Grief. Old grief. He thought of how his mother spoke of her father. He'd died long before Sulu had been born. Faded, but still present. When he looked over at her, he found that she was staring across the room, as if she could see the events unfold.

"When I met Captain Trevor, he was not alone." She said softly. Hikaru winced. By now, the senior staff knew that Steve Trevor's memories were - somehow - imprinted onto Captain Kirk and that he was avoiding Diana because of the risk it posed. He had only found out earlier that day exactly why that bothered the captain so much. "When I rescued him from the plane he crashed, I had only just gotten him to shore when the Germans came through the barrier. They attacked and made landfall just as my mother and the Amazon army came to investigate." Diana brushed her hair out of her eyes with one hand. He could tell it was difficult for her to speak of the event, and he had a feeling he was about to find out why. "I had spent so long training, glorifying the noble art of combat. But when the Germans started to fire their guns against my sisters with arrows and spears, I watched this foreign army cut a swath through the women I had thought to be invincible."

"She was one of them?"

"Yes, but, not in the way you think." A sad smile graced her features. "Antiope rode into battle. The entire cavalry, including my mother. A force of nature, fury of the gods. They took down the Germans with expert finesse, the kind of battle I thought I had longed to see. I even got into the fight, but I wasn't watching. I had let my guard down, just as my aunt warned me not to. One of the men trained his rifle on me."

When she didn't finish, he put the pieces together. "She took the bullet for you."

Diana simply nodded.

"I understand that sacrifice." He finally said, turning to face her more. "And… I get it. I understand why you focus on the fight. Because, it's not a game."

Diana smiled softly. "Yes. Precisely."

He went quiet, considering that burden. He couldn't exactly identify, but it had struck all too close to home. He thought of Altamid. He thought of the way his heart had stopped when he found the _Yorktown_ databases in Edison's possession. "Were you angry with her?"

Her brow furrowed and she shook her head. "No. She gave her life protecting me. I could never be upset with her sacrifice. My anger was reserved for Ares and his role in the war." He swallowed and accepted the answer, looking down at his hands clenched together in his lap. Diana seemed to know where his mind was even though he didn't know how to say it. "Your daughter. How old is she?"

"Four." He replied, not surprised that she'd cut right to the heart of it. "And I nearly lost her and Ben on the _Yorktown_ when it was attacked last year."

"But, you didn't." She said softly.

"I know," He agreed. "But, that doesn't change that I'm still out here. I love Starfleet, but it doesn't come without risks. And I… I don't know how I'm going to explain that to Demora as she gets older."

Diana mirrored his position, clasping her hands together and huddling closer as if she was about to impart a great secret. Maybe she was. "I have never been a mother myself, but I was told on more than one occasion that I have fostered many. And more importantly, I watched Superman and his wife make the very difficult decision to have a child, even in the world that we were struggling to build. And Conner had the same questions that you're afraid Demora will probably have. The important thing is to be honest about why you are here. It may take time, but she will understand." She paused, considering her next words. "Duty and honor do not come easily to children, nor should they. They expect us to show them the way. By honoring Starfleet with your service… who knows? You could inspire her to join and lead her own crew one day. If you live your life to its fullest, if you share that passion with her, then I have faith she will always look upon you as fondly as I have Antiope. Or my own mother." She reached out to rest her hand on his shoulder. Her words were soft, kind and exactly what he needed to hear. "You are a good husband and father, Hikaru. I do not doubt that."

He swallowed down a lump in his throat, not entirely sure when it had gotten there. "Thank you…" He breathed. In a moment, she had bled months of tension and worry away from him.

"The captain was right. You do have a way of putting things into perspective." Hikaru said, glancing over at her with a smile. "And you… Diana, you care so much. When I think about how long you've been among us, the things you've seen humanity do… it's amazing that you can still see the best in people when I'm pretty sure we don't deserve it."

Diana chuckled, sitting up. "Nonsense. No one is perfect. Including me."

"Captain Kirk would beg to differ." He said with a grin. He couldn't help himself. He knew how the captain looked at her, and he could tell that Diana valued the captain's friendship. He hoped it was more, to be honest. The captain had seemed much more grounded since she'd arrived on the ship. Without her around these last few days, he wasn't the man he'd settled into over the last couple of months.

The way Diana's eyebrow quirked up made Hikaru's grin widen, "Jim Kirk has a bit of a reputation with the crew that when he falls, he falls fast. We've all been with him for several years now, so we know his quirks." Hikaru moved over to lean against a storage container and took a sip of his water. "And it's clear the two of you were getting really close."

"I didn't think it was _that_ clear." Diana's lips pursed in a way that reminded Hikaru of Nyota when she suspected someone was about to out-gossip her. He had finally made a parry that had landed.

"When you're in free fall the ground always seems further away until it's right under you." He chuckled some, "I heard a rumor there were a few crew members who got in trouble with Commander Spock. They were engaging in some.. er… lucrative speculation on when and where you and the Captain would finally admit to being a couple."

"Lucrative spec— They were betting on us?" The indignation was adorable. "Wait, how do you know this?"

Another blow landed! She might have defeated him in hand to hand sparring today, but so far he was ahead on the verbal score. "I am a senior officer. I also… might have been present."

"And participating?" Ahh, he'd given away too much. Diana's eyes had narrowed at him, but there was still a twinkle of mirth in them, and the farthest corner of her mouth had tugged up the slightest amount. Hikaru was Japanese, this sort of contained enjoyment was quite familiar. Every time he'd made a childhood teacher or elder crack up in a situation where they knew they must remain stony faced. Verbal Sparring victory was close at hand.

"Maybe." He admitted. "But in the end, Spock was more interested in correcting the logic of our wagers than actually shutting us down."

Finally a smile cracked Diana's face. "That's terrible, Hikaru. My relationship with the captain…"

"Is your relationship. I know." He finished the thought for her, "But we all love the Captain, too. We worry about him. He worries about you, that means we worry about him worrying about you."

"You keep mentioning him," Diana said, the smile had faded. Hikaru tried to hide his guilty look, but it must not have been quick enough. She stood and stared him down, the mirth disappearing from her expression. "Did Jim send you to… to, what? Distract me?"

Damn. A point lost. The match was slipping out of his favor. Hikaru stood to face her, holding his hands up in a state of apology and to ease her. "Not exactly, no."

"What do you mean, 'not exactly?' He's been avoiding me for days. I can't even help him make sense of what's going on, because he simply won't talk to me. So instead he sends you?" He could sense that there was more to the situation than he knew. Diana didn't seem angry, per se, but certainly unhappy with the situation. "He did not tell you what he said to me, did he?"

"No? Diana, please, let me explain." He half-expected her to cut him off. When he didn't, he took the opportunity to speak and made sure to make efficient use of the time. "The captain has been on the bridge almost every waking hour he has. I have been on duty with him for most of those shifts, and when I attempted to get him to take a break, he told me it wouldn't do him any good and he ordered me off-duty instead.

"He might have suggested that I speak with you because he knew I was looking forward to something like this." He motioned to the broadswords that had since been put into their cargo container. "But, truth be told, I think that was just a smokescreen, because I think he's worried about you. It wasn't like he told me 'Hey, go spy on Diana and tell me how she's doing.' I think he just... wanted..." Hikaru's words were failing him. At this rate, the match would be a devastating loss.

"That is… appreciated, but completely unnecessary." The ambassador turned away from him and began to pace the length of the training mat. When she reached the end, she pivoted and began the long strides back towards him. "I do not need a minder. I need to speak with him and he _knows_ that."

Before Hikaru could say anything else, Diana had made her way over to the console on the wall and had flipped the switch for verbal query. "Computer, what the current location of Captain Kirk?"

CAPTAIN KIRK IS IN THE BRIEFING ROOM.

He could see the letters, red and blocky, even from where he was sitting. He wasn't sure there was a point in trying to stop her.

Any lingering sensation to stop her disappeared when she turned back to him, jaw set and her eyes clearly troubled. "Please know, I'm not upset with you. I'd like us to do this more, provided we have the opportunity. This is… my issue with Jim. I need to work it out with him."

Diana turned and left. The cargo bay doors shut with a mechanical thud after her.

He sighed. It was hard to tell which sparring match he had failed at more. That was… not how he had hoped to help the captain. Or Diana.

Days like this, he missed Pavel. Maybe the _Farragut_ had less complicated personal relations.

Hikaru chuckled at himself and shook his head, grabbing his uniform to head to his quarters.


	23. Song for Eurydice, Part 1: Act II

**Song for Eurydice, Part 1: Act II**

 _My father once told me - He said: you see something wrong in the world, you can either do something or you can do nothin'._

The words rolled around in his mind, itching at the back of his skull. They were so familiar, but profoundly _not_ Jim Kirk's words. But, nevertheless, he felt the truth in his own life through them.

 _And I already tried nothin'._

How many times had he ridden his motorcycle down those dusty roads near the shipyards? If Chris hadn't dragged his ass up and out of that bar, how much longer would he have kept kicking up that same dust?

Chris Pike had been the closest thing to a real father Jim had ever had. Jim wished he'd said something before it had been too late.

What was it he had said to Spock after Chris's death? On the _Enterprise_ when they went after Khan. _I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I only know what I_ _ **can**_ _do._

Unbidden, he could feel hands that were both his and _not_ his clenching at the wooden crate in front of him on a tarmac in Germany. An explosion ripped through the facility and in the midst of it, a figure he couldn't make out.

 _Oh my god! What are we gonna do?_ It had been more and more difficult to tell when it was Charlie in those memories and when it was Scotty.

 _There's not much we_ _ **can**_ _do. If that's who I think it is._ Those words rang so close to the events of Jim's own past. _But, we_ _ **can**_ _stop that plane._

Jim didn't know if he had been living a life parallel to Steve Trevor's own… or as his ghost.

All he knew was what he _could_ do. It was the mantra they both seemed to share, three centuries apart.

He could - and would - find a way to cope, to fix this. These memories, this person, that Jim had no right to know so much about.

 _Captain._ They were even captains. He couldn't tell if he was hearing Spock's voice or the Colonel's sometimes.

Jim sat, placid and lost in thought as he stared aimlessly at the table in front of him. His hand at his mouth, he star ahead, unblinking.

"Captain."

Jim and Steve shared all too much in common. At least Jim could take comfort in the fact that when faced with the impossible, they both did the same thing: they took the handful of things that made sense and tried to control those. Steve charting a course on his map without a compass, Jim sending Spock to review possible M-class planets while they made their way back to _Yorktown_ …

" _ **Jim**_."

He blinked. The briefing room suddenly came into focus around him and Jim sat up suddenly, turning to face the voice. His first officer stood just past the doorway, a datapadd in his hand and his expression as close to concern as Jim could recognize.

"Spock." Jim said, using the name and face to anchor himself in the present. As Spock came closer, he could feel the anchor drag along the seabed of his mind before finally catching hold. The thoughts of Steve Trevor, Veld… they finally left him for the moment. "Did you find anything?"

"I believe I have located several class-M planets that match your specifications." The Vulcan crossed the distance between them to hand Jim the padd. As he did so, he glanced around the room before focusing on the captain. "If I may ask… you have quarters for any meetings you wish to have off the bridge, Jim. I believe Doctor McCoy has stated numerous times that he prefers that you sleep and that your captain's quarters facilitate work and sleep."

Jim chuckled, giving him a sidelong glance before grabbing his mug of coffee. "Come on, Spock, it almost sounds like the two of you are on the same side."

"When it comes to your health, Jim, we oftentimes do agree. You do not have much regard for your well-being, so we must." Spock's mouth quirked into the half-Vulcan's equivalent of a smile.

"We're hardly ever in here. If I don't spend _some_ time in it, you'd never even know we had a briefing room." Jim replied wryly. He rose his mug to his lips and took a sip, only to grimace and pull back.

His coffee was ice cold. He'd only poured it a few minutes ago,...

Jim glanced at the time on the datapadd's upper right corner.

Or an hour ago.

He set his coffee down abruptly, then focused on the datapadd. Better not to give Spock and Bones a reason to gang up on him. He had been coping thus far. He would just have to pay more attention. Not get...

 _There's no relative direction in the vastness of space._ Commodore Paris. She always knew how to get to the heart of the matter. _There's only yourself, your ship, your crew. It's easier than you think to get lost._

 _You have a long journey ahead of you. Where you need to go, some people can't follow._

"Four planets, all class-M," Jim rattled off, focusing on the information in front of him instead of the way Chief's voice made him seem like he was just out of sight. "All pre-warp, but close to it, and all proto-Hellenistic cultures."

"Have you discussed this with Ambassador Prince? Given these parameters, it is logical that she may have insight regarding these Hellenistic cultures." Jim narrowed his eyes and cast an annoyed glance up at him. The way Spock was standing, he had the distinct impression the Vulcan was _hovering._

"Could you sit down, please? You're making me nervous." Jim griped, nodding towards one of the chairs. "Thank you," He said as his first officer did so, although gratitude wasn't the emotion he was trying to convey. Jim went back to scanning through the different records and fell silent.

"What are you hoping to find with pre-warp societies? As you know, the prime directive - "

"Spock, whatever we do, we're not going to interfere with their development. Give me a little credit." Jim said, not sure why he felt so short-tempered. Maybe it was the lack of sleep, maybe it was the fact that he didn't like explaining himself...

That wasn't true. Jim never had a problem explaining himself to his crew. And he _valued_ the opinions of his senior staff. _I'm sounding like the other guy._

He set the padd down and rubbed his eyes, trying to clear his mind. "I'm sorry, Spock. I'm not in the best frame of mind right now."

"You are experiencing a highly unusual neurological phenomenon, Jim. I would be remiss in my duty as your first officer and as your friend if I did not give you the benefit of the doubt." Spock sat back in the chair, watching him.

Jim smiled. It was tired, but it was real. For just a minute, he could let down his guard. There were no junior officers to see him on the bridge, no chief medical officer to try to convince him to sleep. Spock knew Jim's mind better than most. So, when Jim let his body slump into the same sense of weary unease as his mind, he took comfort knowing Spock would understand. "I don't know if Bones would agree with you. Or, hell, if I would."

Spock sat forward. "How are you feeling, Jim?"

The question was a simple one any other day of the week. But, if Spock had to ask it, then it meant he was worried. Even if he didn't show it outright. "Confused, mostly. And frustrated."

"How so?"

He sighed and shrugged. "I… I keep remembering things that I know aren't _my_ life, they're this… Steve's. And as long as I focus on the ship, the crew, I'm okay. But… sometimes, I start thinking about his memories of Earth… of Diana… and I get lost."

"Perhaps, with time, the symptoms will fade."

"Maybe." He breathed, turning his chair a bit so he could look out at the starscape, distorted by the warp bubble. After a long moment, he finally voiced what had been bothering him since Diana had come aboard. It had been simmering under the surface, and he'd even shared it with her. "Every time I think I know who I am, Spock, something happens that throws it all into question. Khan's blood, me getting a year older than my father, and now… this guy. Steve Trevor's life and mine feel like two sides of the same coin and that…." He stopped. He couldn't say it, but they both knew. _That scares me. What if I never made a single decision that wasn't Steve's first? Who the hell am I?_

"Jim, if I may suggest a Vulcan turn of phrase for this scenario." The captain turned to his first officer. "The Vulcan philosopher Kiri-kin-tha posited that the First Law of Metaphysics is as such: Nothing unreal exists. Therefore, what you experience and what you see must exist in some fashion."

Jim blinked. Vulcan philosophy had never been his strong suit, but even when he tried to keep up with Spock, he oftentimes found himself unable to relate. He knew the phrase, but he didn't see how it applied. "I'm not sure I follow."

"While it may be true that you and Steve Trevor share a genetic identity, it does not negate the autonomy of your own actions, Jim." Spock considered his next words carefully. "You are still… you. But, much like fruit from a harvest, you may share the same attributes as a completely different fruit."

"I don't know if that's the case, Spock." Jim sighed. He wanted to believe in Spock's theory, but it sounded too good to be true. He couldn't be sure that anything he'd done regarding Diana had been _him._ "Bones says I can't have two neural patterns. The human body physically can't take the stress. Maybe I can come to grips with knowing I am a… reincarnation of the guy - " The words sounded foreign. "But, I don't think I can just reason the memories into a state where they don't conflict. I remember my father being dead when I was born and simultaneously arguing with him at a farmhouse in Iowa over a war I didn't fight."

"Regardless of the presence of other memories, you still experienced your life as Jim Kirk. That does not need to change."

"Sure, fine, that's me." He said, dismissive. Easier not to argue with Spock about his identity crisis. "But, that doesn't change the fact that Diana kept it from me for months, and waited until those memories were literally dropped into my head before she admitted that I looked like someone she loved. That she slept with. And I have to carry that around!"

Spock's expression softened in a way that Jim wasn't sure he'd really seen before. Not unless Uhura was around. It was more human. "I imagine that the loss of Captain Trevor was felt deeply by Ambassador Prince. And to discuss that with you would have reminded her of her loss. Perhaps she did not wish to burden you, or cause you to question your friendship as you are now."

"So, I'm just supposed to forgive her?"

"I would recommend speaking with her."

"I have no idea if she's ever felt anything for me, Spock. I don't even know if our friendship is real."

Spock pursed his lips, then finally spoke. "When I first met Ambassador Spock, I did not know if I could trust him. Even though he was my future self, I had been set on a divergent path to his. Even now, as he has passed, I feel that loss as if it were the loss of my own. In a way, perhaps my _katra_ has been tied to his. But, I was able to see him as someone other than myself. Perhaps, Diana has done the same for you. But, I cannot answer that question for you, Jim. Only she can."

His stomach rolled with guilt and fresh hurt as he considered the last time he and Diana had spoken. What he'd said. "I told her when we got to _Yorktown_ , I wanted her off the ship."

Spock's eyes narrowed. Jim had a feeling he didn't agree, "That is your decision. May I ask why you think that would help?"

"I don't know if it will." He said softly. "I was - I _am_ angry. And at the time, it seemed like the only way to ensure that I can protect the crew."

"While that is admirable, Jim, I don't believe your motives are entirely altruistic."

Jim hesitated, starting at a seam in the table, letting his fingers run over it before he finally voices what he hadn't wanted to in front of her. "I don't know if she ever wanted to stay on the ship because of anything I said, or because she thinks I'm Steve. And what if everything I feel for her isn't me? What if that _is_ Steve?"

"You are not. And yet, you are. Is it possible that she also feels such a duality? That she wished to trust you because you looked like Steve, but learned to trust _you_ , Jim?" When Jim didn't reply, Spock simply pivoted the conversation. He was almost jealous that he'd done it so easily. "What is it you hope to accomplish by searching for these planets? Do you expect to purge all knowledge of Steve Trevor's life from your mind? That may not be possible." Jim's frown deepened as Spock hit a little too close to home.

"The truth is…" He sighed, trying to find the words to describe the insanity that threatened to overwhelm him. _The truth is I don't know what I want._ To let go of Steve meant letting go of memories that, in a way, felt like home. And yet, keeping them felt just as wrong as pushing them away. "I'm not sure what I'm looking for. But, I'll know it when I see it. And whatever it is… I think it can help me… be _me_ again."

"Then, it is fortunate there are only four planets to search through." Spock motioned to the datapadd again. "But, if I can assist, I will. My suggestion is to look at the Argelius system."

"Argelius…" Jim frowned, switching over to the record. He scanned through the details on the planet, then paused as he found the visual aids he'd hoped for. "Is this from our probe data?"

Spock shook his head curtly. "No. The people of Argelius IV launched several space programs similar to Earth's _Voyager_ program. The _USS Kelvin_ intercepted one such probe."

Jim's head snapped up to give Spock his full attention. And disbelief. "Bullshit."

No mirth appeared in Spock's eyes. Instead, he nodded to the padd again. "Your father made the final report himself on the findings."

Jim's gaze dropped back to the datapadd. His father…. He'd known his dad was a science officer. It was Starfleet protocol at the time. But, to see the words George Kirk…

Jim set the padd down and touched the log entry.

The voice that filtered through the briefing room's internal comm was one he hadn't heard in years. His mother only had a handful of personal recordings and logs…

" _First Officer's Log, Lieutenant Commander George Kirk, USS Kelvin. Stardate: 2232.49."_

"Just a few months before he…" Jim trailed off as he realized the thought had been aloud.

" _We've completed our full analysis of the Argelian probe and have archived all of the information the people provided. I've spent the last three weeks combing through everything. The Argelians have given us their full history and culture, and they are exactly what Winona hoped: a proto-Hellenistic culture that somehow evolved parallel alongside Earth. She's over the moon, but, now that she's officially on maternity leave until the baby's born, we've agreed that the best thing to do is to send a formal request to the captain that we attempt to find the planet in our next tour of this sector in… 2234. It's a haul, no one's ever gone that far out before."_

Jim glanced at the location of the planet. Well past the _Yorktown_ 's location. The _USS Kelvin_ wouldn't have come that far out unless Starfleet felt deep space travel would be worth it. He had a feeling his father had known that even when he indulged his mother on the subject.

" _With luck, the Argelians will be closer to warp capability. If not, we may have to exercise typical non-interference protocols so that we can at least interact and observe their culture. I'll be the first to admit that I don't typically get this excited over finding probes of all things, but, it sure puts a smile on Winona's face so I'm happy to come along for the ride._

" _Captain Robau has received my format written report on the culture and agrees that it is a candidate for further study. That being said, I do have one minor concern. In evaluating the astronomical data they provided, there's an odd gap that seems to occur every 38 or so of our standard years. It also coincides with a festival they have called The Vision, but I can't figure out what could be happening on the planet. Unfortunately, we missed it by about 9 years. We'll have to wait until, I don't know, 2264 to even see it._

" _Let's hope no one has to wait that long. All I know is, from the way their records read… whatever it is, this Vision is an astronomical event that affects every planet in the system. Whichever ship comes back here needs to be careful."_ The padd chirped as it reached the end of the log.

Silence stretched between first officer and captain as Jim tried to process what he'd heard.

When he finally spoke, his throat was dry and he found himself debating drinking the ice cold coffee on the table. "A proto-Hellenistic planet undergoing an astronomical phenomenon… in 2264. That my father wanted to study." He leaned back in his chair. "I'd say that was impossible, but…"

"You frequently believe in and accomplish what most people deem impossible, Jim." Spock agreed. "And the similarities do suggest that if you are looking for a pattern, this could be the starting point."

Jim nodded. It took him a second to catch on that Spock was essentially violating his own rules here. "It's not very _logical_ though, is it?"

"On the contrary. If one must consider that Diana's rival in the 2040s could appear on a planet across the quadrant and two hundred years later, then one must also consider that there could be patterns working across the larger fabric of the galaxy that we simply lack the knowledge to predict." That little pull at Spock's mouth appeared again. He was _teasing_ Jim. Or amused. Either way, it meant bad news for him. "If we understand the variables at work with Argelius IV, we may then understand the larger pattern."

Jim stood and made his way over to the first officer. By the time Spock had stood as well, Jim was already handing him back the datapadd, galvanized. "This is where we need to go, Spock. Set a course. _This_ is Delphi. It has to be."

" _What_ is Delphi?" Diana's voice hit Jim like a physical blow. He must have missed the doors to the briefing room hissing open while he'd been talking. Since Spock had entered the room, he had begun to feel grounded. But, now that she was here, he could feel his control slipping.

When he glanced over to see her, the curious look on her face reminded him - unfortunately - of being in the luminescent springs of Themyscira. The way she'd raked her eyes over him - _Dammit,_ _ **no.**_ _ **Steve**_ _ **.**_

He was ready to ask her to leave, but Spock was too quick. Jim couldn't help but think that it was intentional. "The captain described a planet he believes could prove useful in dealing with his… unique affliction." The first officer seemed to be relishing watching Jim glower at him. "I believe we have found the planet."

"A planet that you think is Delphi." Diana repeated, her words measured and clipped. It reminded him of when she gave Etta her very robust opinion on how a secretary sounded like a sla - _no, that's Steve. That's not you, Jim. That's not you._

"Yes." He finally sighed, resigned to the fact that he would have to explain. "A proto-Hellenistic culture with a temple that looks like the Parthenon." Jim kept talking as Spock extended the datapadd for her to read. He'd discuss that with his first officer later. Right now, he had to keep his head on straight. "And I think it's this one."

"Why?" Diana asked as she read through the information on Argelius IV.

"Because my father was the officer who found and studied their probe. And your mother is the one who told me to go to Delphi. I'm starting to think it's all related."

She immediately had his full attention, confusion clear on her face. "My mother? What are you talking about?"

Jim cleared his throat, crossing his arms over his chest and steeling himself for his first officer's reaction. "I dreamt about it. Every night since it happened. I don't necessarily go to the same places, but it always ends the same. Your mother tells me to go to Delphi."

"That is not the reasoning you gave for this research effort, Jim." The Vulcan protested, but Jim's gaze was still on Diana. She hadn't looked away from him, and every second she held his eye, he could feel his resolve crumbling further.

"I've been dreaming of Delphi as well." The words, thankfully, kept Jim from getting lost.

"You have? Why didn't you say anything sooner?" No sooner than the question left his lips, Jim knew that he had made a misstep. They both knew why.

"You have been _avoiding_ me. And instead of coming to see me yourself, you covertly sent Hikaru to distract me. I will not be put off any longer." She set the datapadd down on the table, closing the distance between them a bit more. "We must talk about this, Jim."

"We already did, and you told me there was nothing you could do to get this out of my head." Jim reminded her, a bit more harsh than he had intended. But, he couldn't look at her without thinking of the way his heart had been pulling him towards her. And she'd never seen him. Only Steve.

"That doesn't mean that I don't want to help you. Nor do I think you understand the circumstances around my coming aboard. Regarding our friendship."

"It's pretty clear from where I'm standing." Jim said, his tone brooking no argument. His hand resting against his bicep had started to grip the muscle tightly, hoping to keep control of his rising temper.

"I am not giving up on you. I will not go." Diana didn't back down, but from the way her jaw had set, he could tell she was thinking of how to elaborate. If Jim stood his ground - and he had every intention of doing so - he had a feeling one of them would walk away regretting their words.

"Captain, I believe we have sufficient information to prepare for an away mission to Argelius IV." Spock said, momentarily breaking the tension. "As there is no further information needed, I will be on the bridge." The first officer turned to go, much to Jim's dismay, but paused for one last parting shot before he left. "Consider what I have said, Jim. As the ambassador often told me, he had the benefit of being in two places at once."

And, then there were two.

Jim inhaled and let it go slowly, trying to keep his temper, his mind, all of it - _any_ of it - in check. "Diana - " He wasn't even sure what he wanted to say, or where he wanted to start.

He shouldn't have been surprised that she was already prepared.

"I _want_ to help you, Jim. And I want to fix what… what _I_ have broken between us. But, I cannot do that if you refuse to speak to me." Diana, as usual, had hit right to the center of the issue. He had avoided her. He didn't know how to process the information and how to quell his anger even while he knew forgiving her would be as easy as breathing.

Sighing, Jim scrubbed his face with one hand before motioning for her to continue. He knew she was right. And would telling her 'No' stop her? Probably not, seeing as how she'd tracked him down. "Fine…" He said softly. _Where_ was all of this anger coming from? He should have been glad that she was going to be honest with him, and he couldn't stomp down this irrational sense of anger. _The war kept taking and taking and it didn't stop…_ He could hear his own voice, but the thought wasn't his. _I had to learn to bury all of that or I'd explode. You don't know how to do that._

Jim took a seat on the edge of the table, stony-faced as he tried to hide how much the rogue thought had shaken him. And how it had been _right._ He had buried grief and anger, but nothing like _this._ It felt like an entity.

If Diana had noticed why he'd given her the floor, she didn't comment on it. Instead, she kept her distance, but her eyes never wavered from his. He couldn't help but wonder… did she think she was staring Jim down? Or Steve?

"If you and I are both dreaming of Delphi," Diana clearly had not come to talk to him about the planet. But, he didn't stop her, either. He didn't know how to even begin with how he felt about her. Keeping the conversation to the mission was best. "Then, it's entirely possible the solution is there."

"How so? I don't even know what's there. It could be a dead end." It wasn't until she began pacing that Jim realized she was probably doing the best she could to agree to his request to table their personal had changed the subject because it was something she could control. _I know that feeling._

"Are you familiar with Delphi's importance to Hellenistic peoples?" She asked.

"I know they had priestesses who said they could see the future. I mean, the Oracle of Delphi is a nice footnote in most history and mythology textbooks." He said.

"That is true, yes." Jim couldn't remember when he'd ever seen her nervous, but she seemed close to it. The way her fingers tapped on her thigh while she paced and spoke. It was as if she was trying to keep herself from going off-script. "The Oracle of Delphi was a priestess chosen by Apollo. It was her duty to breathe the fumes of the chasm below the temple and to give prophecy to willing and faithful subjects. And at certain times of the year, originally on Apollo's birthday specifically, one could ask a request of the god." Jim opened his mouth to reply, but she continued on. "If we are being called to this planet, it maybe that someone on the planet is aware of your plight. They may have the magic needed to help you… understand the truth. Apollo is… _was_ a god of light and truth."

"So are you." Jim reminded her. "And you said you couldn't take this out of my head."

"And the Oracle may not be able to, either. But, it's possible that there is magic there. Magic old enough that you can put the knowledge to rest." Diana made a move towards him, then stopped before she could get much closer. "Jim, when you first told me of the memories, you said it was like being in a dream. Prophecy often feels like the realm of dreams."

"What if you're wrong?" Jim shot back. The way he'd said it rang so eerily close to a memory that he knew it instantly. _What if there is no Ares?_ Jim grit his teeth. Steve had been wrong about gods then. Maybe Jim shouldn't be so quick to count them out now. "What if they don't fade and they don't go away? How am I supposed to live with him in my head? How am I supposed to look at you and not know that I'm just a reminder of the guy you loved?" Jim kept going. He didn't want to hold back. He'd been doing it for so long with her, and if he was going to be stuck in this mess, he at least wanted to be honest. "I mean, honestly, Diana. For a goddess of truth, how could you keep that from me? I thought we were friends, and now I have no idea if you ever saw _me_ at all."

"Jim - "

"Circe was right." He blurted, resting his hands on the edge of the table. "I believed - I _still_ believe in you. I think you could do anything. And I was angry when you told me that you couldn't just take his memories out of my mind, but the fact is, I'm more angry that you spent months getting to know me and you just never thought I should know."

"Jim, _please_." The plaintive tone in her voice gave him pause. She oftentimes seemed so invincible. For a moment, she seemed vulnerable. And he wanted to kick himself for making her feel that way. "You deserve an explanation. So, let me say this. Let me explain what I was thinking, however misguided that was."

Jim's gaze dropped to the floor for a moment, then he finally nodded.

"Thank you." She said. Another step forward and Jim found his gaze dragging back up to hers. Which, apparently, was what she had been waiting for.

"I plucked you from the sea." She began. The words pinged off of the back of his skull and brought him squarely back to Chief's camp. He gripped the edge of the table so hard his knuckles went white. The only thing that brought him back to the briefing room was her voice and what she said next. "I saw your shuttle crash and went after you. When I found you pinned against your bulkhead and that chair, I didn't hesitate to save you. When I pulled you to the shore, I found myself faced with a ghost. In truth, that is why I was so short with you. I didn't want to know what you were - _who_ you were. But, you don't take that for an answer, Jim. You never have. Since the day we met, you have done nothing but try to get past every wall I have put up in front of you so that we can be friends. You have asked of my people, of my time in your past, and throughout it all, you have shown me that you are Jim Kirk. And I came aboard the _Enterprise_ and remain here because of _you,_ Jim. Because you were so open and full of wonder."

It took everything in him not to snap back at her. Instead, he took a deep breath and waited for her to continue.

"Steve… he was the first man I ever loved. He was so different from the Amazons, and yet, for a man so worn and haunted by the war, I could see goodness and light in him." Diana smiled in a way Jim couldn't recall ever seeing before. It was profoundly… nostalgic and sorrowful. "He was my gateway to his world, and I could never thank him for that. Before we could even understand what a relationship together would mean, he gave his life to protect the world. In many ways… I mourn what _could_ have been as much as I mourn what we had."

"So, I'm just a really poignant reminder…" Jim whispered, careful to keep his tone neutral.

"At first, yes. Everything you said, everything you did, even the way you smiled, it all felt as though I was walking through a bad dream." Diana swallowed. Whatever she was about to say, it was difficult for her to admit. He could tell from the way her eyes were glistening from unshed tears. "I was scared that if I told you that it would make any hope that you were somehow him disappear. And at the same time, it would mean losing you. So, I chose the less valorous of the two courses. I kept the truth to myself until I could be certain of who _Jim_ was, and not what of Steve I placed upon you." She stepped closer, and Jim could feel his heart thud painfully in his chest. He wanted to touch her face, to caress that stricken look away. His palms were itching to do it, but… that _couldn't_ be him. "But, that openness, that thirst for the unknown, that desire to explore? That is not Steve. That is you. And that is what I have always found unique and so wonderful about you."

"Diana…." Jim muttered, as if trying to warn her away. Warn her from what, though, he couldn't tell.

"I went to Leonard because I needed to know that scientifically, you could just resemble him. If Circe had never pulled the truth from the very fabric of your soul, I would have told you and we both would have thought it coincidence. I value your friendship. I knew I couldn't hold onto this secret forever." Jim couldn't look away as she spoke. He was caught up in her. That wasn't Steve. He was tired and angry, but… they shared that.

Diana pulled at every heartstring and made him want to do everything he could to stay near her.

Which was precisely why she needed to be off his ship.

It took everything in him not to cup her face in his hands. Instead, he reached out and gently rested his hands on her shoulders. With a careful, deliberate move, he walked her back as he pushed off the table, then he moved across the briefing room so he could get some distance.

"I can understand your fears, I can understand that you didn't know if I was some version of Steve." He said, staring out at the starscape, trying to ground himself in the present. "But, what I can't understand is why you didn't tell me for so long." He could see her in the reflection on the viewport. She was confused. It reminded him of London, of realizing he'd been lying to the senior officials to get to the front anyway.

"But, I just…" Diana began.

Jim turned and waved her attempt to explain away. "No, I know what you told me. But, the fact that you thought you had to go to _Bones_ instead of me. Diana, I have put myself on the line. I was willing to put my ship and her crew on the line for you. I trusted you when you told me there was _magic,_ and that's a pretty big ask, all things considered." He chose his next words carefully. "And I don't know how to fix this. If what we faced together, if the trust I've placed in you at _this_ point wasn't enough, then I have no idea how gain your trust." He shrugged, at a loss. "Hell, maybe I never had it at all."

"Jim…" The way she said his name rang all too close to another name, another time. He could remember how it felt for her to say his name as they lay in bed, watching the snow fall outside. He squeezed his eyes shut. _That's Steve. That's not me._ "You cannot fix that which I have broken. You _do_ have my trust. This is _my_ failing. And I am deeply sorry that I didn't trust you sooner. I should have known that you could respect how difficult this was for me." When he didn't reply, she continued on. "That might be why you're seeing my mother guide you to Delphi. I… I've been a coward. She may have felt she needed to guide you to your salvation even from Elysium. Because I couldn't."

A pressure headache had started to build as she'd spoken. As she mentioned her mother, Jim found himself remembering exactly how fearsome and bold her mother was. _She could rip me apart, and I wouldn't blame her. She has no reason to trust me._ Jim swallowed down bile as he tried to split his thoughts off from Steve Trevor. The longer Diana stood there, the harder it was.

"I will save you. Whatever it is, I can do it." When he looked up again, his heart twisted. There were tears running down her cheeks. For him.

 _ **No.**_ _It has to be me._ The voice rang clean again. It felt like someone had a comm line to his brain, not an errant thought.

"That's what you told him back then, too." Jim said, swallowing a sudden lump down his throat.

"What?"

"And he told you that it had to be him. That..." He took a deep breath as the memory hit his senses. He could smell the cold air on the tarmac, could feel the biting wind against the flack jacket. "I could save today. You could save the world." Jim could feel the well of emotion. _Handing her the watch, running and never looking back, because when she says your name, you know it's almost enough to make you stop._

Jim's head suddenly throbbed, sharp pain lancing through his temple. He brought a hand to his head and stumbled for a moment. He gripped at the table as the world swam around him and his stomach jumped right in, too. He swallowed down bile.

He could hear Diana call his name and could see her moving forward, but he held a hand up to stop her, wrestling his senses under control. "Diana, please, don't…" He breathed, still nauseous and pained.

Jim focused on the computer screen embedded in the briefing room table. The briefing room. _USS Enterprise_. Serial number NCC-1701-A. Commissioned by Starfleet in 2263 after destruction of first ship of her name on Altamid. Altamid. Where they found Jaylah. Krall. Balthazar Edison. Jim Kirk did those things.

He was Jim Kirk.

He was Jim.

Slowly, he righted himself. He kept his eyes closed until he was sure the world would stop swimming. When he finally felt solid, with his feet on the bulkhead, he opened his eyes again and focused on Diana across the room.

"We… we cannot do this right now." He said, a bit mortified that his voice was weaker than he would have liked. Clearing his throat, he continued with a bit more level tone. "I want… to make this work. Whatever _this_ is. If you want to be friends, I can do that. But, I care about you. And it… it hurts that you couldn't trust me with this. But, until we find a solution for your…." He stopped before he let himself fire off some callous epithet. "For Steve, then I have to assume that neither of us knows what the other is feeling or wants. Is that fair?"

She didn't like that proposal. It was obvious. Truth be told, he didn't like it much, either. He wanted to assume that she cared about him. That what he had thought was growing between them was genuine. But, he couldn't know. He didn't even know if the fact that he was fairly certain he loved her - and Jim didn't use the word lightly - was genuine. And there was no way he would open either of them up to that kind of messiness. Not now.

Maybe never.

When she didn't reply, he finally decided that brutal honesty would have to do. "Diana, I can't keep my thoughts straight around you." She furrowed her brow, but he continued. "Don't you get it? I take one look at you and I'm still all over the place. And when you start to speak, it's like my head goes straight into a tailspin and I can't pull back out of it. I'm going to hit the water all over again and…" Jim stopped as he realized his mouth had gotten away from him. He backpedaled away from the table, bracing himself against the viewport again. "That's not me. I didn't crash in the plane." He said, trying to orient himself again. "You see? I can't even keep it together right now." He couldn't look at her, too worried that it would start all over again. "Diana, please leave. When we get to Delphi… then we can talk…"

"No, Jim, please don't shut me out. Let me help you - "

"You can't." He barked. He knew how harsh it sounded and felt immediate regret start to swirl around in his chest.

 _Just like when I told her she was wrong about Ares. I had to watch her suffer when the village died. If I'd just_ _ **listened**_ _to her…_

"That's not me!" Jim snapped to thin air, then whirled. Diana was still standing there, but now her expression had shifted from concern to something else. Was she… was she afraid? "I can't… you don't know what this is like. You have to go. Please, Diana. My head is throbbing, and I just want to sit down."

"Then let me help you," Diana made her way over to him, even as he tried to shrug her off. When she began to steer him to a chair, he turned to look at her and saw the same woman that had crossed the No Man's Land. He could see the raw concern on her face.

"Dammit, you have the biggest heart I've ever seen…" He breathed, bringing one hand to cup her cheek. He brushed a tear away with his thumb, then frowned. "You couldn't have saved them, Diana. I promise you, this wasn't your fault. Follow the smoke. Chief. You have to… _I_ have to find Chief."

 _Where you need to go, some people can't follow._ The voice was clearer now. He knew that voice, he knew that man.

"I'm going to get Doctor McCoy." Diana said softly, reaching for her communicator. He could tell she was shaken. The way her brow twitched. He'd seen it before.

 _Bones… Bones can help_.

"Get… Bones, Diana… I think I'm…" He looked up at her.

 _She was the last face I thought of before I pulled the trigger._

That was the last thought he had before he realized he was tasting iron and the world went black.


	24. Song for Eurydice, Part 1: Act III

**Song for Eurydice, Part 1: Act III**

Commander Spock often found the actions of his fellow crewmembers to be illogical at the best of times, and highly self-destructive at the worst. As he manned the captain's chair in Jim's absence, the Vulcan had the distinct impression that his closest friend was in the process of taking a course of action that was both.

It was not the fact that the captain had given the order to change course to Argelius IV that troubled the Vulcan. It was most certainly the information that he had finally revealed just before Spock had left the briefing room.

Captain Kirk had never been one to rely on prophecy or purported acts of divine providence. The notion that he was trusting in a dream suggested an additional effect to his psyche outside of the neural patterning.

While Spock had mentioned the Vulcan _katra_ , he had to confess that he had given his own very little thought for much of his life. It had only been in the death of his mother, and later Ambassador Spock, that he found himself questioning whether the Vulcan High Command had been accurate to assume that the _katra_ was simply a myth of primitive Vulcan culture. Spock had questioned and meditated on the subject. He could not see a reason to suggest that one could not have a living soul.

His best friend seemed to possess two. And they were at odds.

Given the knowledge that his dreams influenced his actions, Spock considered Jim's health once again. As was expected of both a science officer and a Vulcan, he scrutinized the situation from all angles.

It was, in fact, logical to assume that there was a greater intelligence at work guiding the actions of the _Enterprise_ and her crew, most likely through Diana herself. Considering Diana's age and prominent legacy on Earth as an individual who interacted with many long-lived species, Spock could easily draw the conclusion that she still had enemies across the galaxy outside of Circe.

In that way, Argelius IV did seem a perfectly logical option.

But, Jim's attachment - or in this case, blatant denial of an attachment - to Diana did give Spock pause. If Jim was determined to solve this neurological issue by following a "hunch", as it were, then Diana was the logical expert on the subject and could prove quite valuable. He could see no logical reason for Jim to demand that she leave the ship.

It was purely an emotional response. One that Spock himself felt all too keenly.

It had been quite obvious to Spock and to Leonard that Jim was enamoured with Diana. It had taken very little time for him to take an interest, as he was wont to do. However, even though Spock had not spent much time with Diana outside of her duties as ambassador, he had noticed that she spent the majority of her free time with the captain. Considering how much time he and Nyota had spent together prior to their relationship, he could understand if Diana had been reluctant to commit. But, she _had_ shown interest. If not verbally, then certainly in proximity and the quality of the time spent.

But, just as he was not the ambassador Spock, neither was Jim Steve Trevor. And given Diana's wisdom in other such matters of both human insight and intellect, Spock felt that she must have known the same. He had meant what he suggested to Jim: it was entirely possible for her to love the man that he resembled while learning to see the differences in the two.

Now faced with the prospect of losing Jim's trust and friendship, Spock was pleased to see her arrive in the briefing room. It suggested that she would not take a passive role as Jim decided her fate for them both.

A small smile tugged at Spock's lips as he considered the same of Nyota. He should have known better than to decide their fate without her. And he had certainly been shown how illogical that decision was.

Jim would, too.

And that was precisely why Spock felt that Lieutenant Sulu and Mister Scott had been remiss in their wagers over the progress of any relationship between Diana and the captain. Both of them had incorrectly assumed that the captain could "win" Diana over.

From what Spock had observed, Diana would not appreciate, nor did she need an individual to make decisions for her own well-being. No matter how impulsive Jim's gesture could have been, it did not fit his past interactions with the ambassador. When Nyota had mentioned the emotional trepidation between the two after the mission to Althea, Spock, in turn had taken stock of Jim's behavior. He had not pursued Diana with the same reckless abandon he had pursued others in the past. In fact, he was highly aware that he valued her friendship first.

"Commander, we've set course for Argelius IV, warp six." Lieutenant Sulu reported from the helm.

"Thank you, Lieutenant. Please provide - " Spock's standard request for hourly course checks was suddenly cut off by a ship's comm signal. One that he knew all too well.

" _Sickbay to the bridge! Medical emergency in the briefing room! I need site-to-site transport for the captain_ _ **now!**_ _"_ Doctor McCoy's voice was fraught with tension and worry, nearly to the point of panic.

Spock was out of the captain's chair in a moment and he was heading for the turbolift. As he did so, he pointed to the crewman managing the engineering console. "Crewman, initiate the site-to-site transport. Lieutenant Uhura, let Doctor McCoy know I am on the way. Mister Sulu, you have the bridge."

The words were all out with peak efficiency. He wasted no time to extrapolate further. He knew the crew, he knew their capabilities. He knew his own.

He also knew that the Vulcan ritual of _kolinar_ was not nearly as complete a purge of emotion as the High Command had hoped, and Spock's heart was racing with every second that passed without knowing what had happened to Jim. He had considered Jim's calm nature to be indicative that his condition was stabilizing. Apparently, he had been wrong.

No sooner than the turbolift doors opened, Spock sprinted forward. Without pause, he dodged a few crewmen making their way down the corridors before he came to a halt outside Sickbay. For a fleeting moment, a distinctly illogical dread filled him as he recalled a similar run down to Engineering. But, Khan was gone and Jim was already in Sickbay.

Spock steeled himself, found inner calm and stepped forward.

Sickbay was a flurry of activity.

He spotted the ambassador first. Diana stood a few feet away from Leonard and his nurses. He barely had time to register the knitted brow, the way her hands were propped on her hips before she turned to pace the room.

Spock turned his attention to Leonard and his staff. They were in the process of restraining Jim on a biobed as he seized, limbs rigid and shaking.

"Baldwin, get me 5 ccs of tricordrazine!" McCoy barked as he examined Jim, checking his pupils and other vitals as they rushed to work. "I need to stop this seizure _now!_ "

Nurse Baldwin grabbed a hypospray and keyed in the appropriate dosage and molecular information before handing it over to him. "5 ccs of tricordrazine - "

McCoy didn't bother to let her finish before he pressed the hypospray to Jim's neck and pressed the button. The hiss of the device was lost over alarms from the diagnostic console. To the doctor's credit, he continued to perform admirably, undaunted by the dire situation.

As moments ticked by, Spock felt his hands ball into fists as Leonard darted around the biobed, barking more orders while the first officer could only watch.

The alarms ceased and the diagnostic console began to chirp appropriate measurements as Jim finally went slack on the bed and came out of the neurological episode.

Leonard sighed and stood straight, visibly relieved but still troubled. "Dammit, Jim, you're gonna make me go gray."

When the doctor didn't offer more information to the two individuals waiting, Spock refocused himself, allowed the emotional response to pass before he spoke. "Report, Doctor. How is the Captain?"

It did not go unnoticed that Leonard seemed to focus all his attention on Diana for a long moment before he walked over to Spock. When the ambassador pivoted from her pacing to join them, the chief medical officer finally spoke. "He had a full grand mal seizure. By the time we got him on the bed, both the neural patterns were out of control and his brain couldn't handle the stress. Thankfully, tricordrazine is incredibly strong stuff, so it did the trick, but… I was afraid of this. I didn't think they'd start out this bad, though. I've got him sedated for now. He should come to in a couple of hours, once I think he's levelled out."

Spock immediately had a theory on what had transpired. "Ambassador, when I left you and the Captain, he seemed stable and aware."

"And he was." She agreed. He did not need to indulge in his human side to clearly see the distress and concern on her face. "We discussed why I kept this information from him, and we seemed to be working through things when he started to… to lose track of which memories were his. When I realized it caused him pain, I urged him to come here, but he did not want the help. And then he started to babble about… about things he - _Steve_ had experienced." She paused, as if she was concerned with the information she was about to convey. "He seemed like he was starting to talk to himself. I'm not sure."

"The other neural pattern must be trying to find a way to co-exist, but instead it's fighting for dominance." Leonard frowned. He wasted no time in turning to Spock. "No more foolin' around. We need to get him back to Starfleet Medical."

"What? No!" Diana protested. "Leonard, this is not a problem that your doctors can solve!"

"Diana, darlin', if you have some way of bippity-boppity-booing this, then I suggest you do it right now. But, last time I checked, you didn't."

Spock rose an eyebrow. As per usual, the doctor's unusual reliance on popular culture and older parlance did not help the situation. "Dr. McCoy's antiquated turn of phrase aside, we have already set course to Argelius IV. It would take approximately 12 hours to reach the planet at current warp speed. The _Yorktown_ , and by extension Starfleet Medical, will still take several days."

"So, what, you think we should indulge in Jim's delusions of grandeur? Go to this planet with no guarantee that it can do a damn thing to help him?" McCoy scowled, clearly displeased.

Spock, nevertheless, persisted. "The Ambassador is correct, Doctor, in that you do not have any solution to address the issue. It is possible that this detour may be conducive to Jim's recovery."

"Leonard," Diana reached out, touching the doctor's arm with a gentleness that belied her strength. "Give me time to research what we can on Argelius. There was extensive probe information from the people. If I can bring you something of substance, then can you at least entertain the idea?"

"I would be interested in what you find as well." Spock remarked, voicing his support for the idea. After all, the only course of action that would definitively harm Jim would be to take _no_ action.

Huffing, Leonard was predictably cantankerous as he threw his hands up in defeat. "I guess I don't have much choice. And here I thought maybe you'd be on _my_ side, Spock! You're a scientist, dammit!"

"I am, Doctor. But, I believe that Jim's 'gut', as it were, was onto something. There are unusual scientific circumstances at Argelius IV, and they could be related." Spock motioned to the prone figure behind them. "And since the captain is not awake to voice his opinion, I must consider it unchanged."

Leonard took a long moment to consider the situation before him, looking from one to the other. It must have been curious for him. For two individuals that approached the universe so differently to agree. Eventually, he sighed and shook his head. "All right. But, you better be right, because if he has another seizure like that, there might not be time for another one."

It was Diana who answered, but Spock agreed with the sentiment nevertheless. "We are, Leonard. I know we are." Once satisfied that the chief medical officer would give them time, she turned her attention back to Spock. "That being said, I confess that much of the science in the reports is beyond me."

"I understand, Ambassador." Spock was still quite impressed with how much she had learned, but knew there would be much that she simply would not have the benefit of understanding the basic principles of. That was, after all, his purview as a science officer. "I would be happy to assist you. Perhaps I can meet you in the briefing room once I provide my report to the bridge?"

She nodded. "Yes, thank you."

Spock glanced over at Leonard, then motioned to Jim. "You will alert me when he is awake." The request was polite, but not optional.

McCoy nodded, then glanced over at Diana. "You, too. I'll let you both know. But, Diana…" He trailed off. The trio already knew what needed to be said.

She took the words - and the burden - from him. "Stay away, I know." Spock recalled the way Jim had said similar to her when Circe had first afflicted him.

"I'm making it worse."

* * *

Diana returned to the briefing room, intent on finding concrete proof that Argelius IV would have the answers they sought. No one spoke to her on her way. If word had gotten out that the captain had taken ill, they had not thought to ask her, or knew better than to do so. She knew her expression was severe, if only to match the torment beneath.

This was torture for her. Diana prided herself on her loyalty, her desire to help and love others. That had included the crew of the _Enterprise_. It included her captain… No matter how confusing or complicated those emotions felt, seeing him writhe on the biobed before her had made them quite impossible to ignore.

What was it Sophocles had said of Oedipus, doomed king of Athens? _Pride breeds the tyrant violent pride, gorging, crammed to bursting with all that is overripe and rich with ruin... Can such a man, so desperate, still boast he can save his life from the flashing bolts of god?_

Diana had assumed that she could protect the _Enterprise_ from anything that they were not already capable and accustomed to. That the flashing bolts of the gods would come for her directly. But, she had been wrong. She had not prepared herself for that which her hands and her heart could not heal.

She passed through the doors to the briefing room, then stilled. Her gaze fell upon the datapadd on the far end of the table and, by extension, Jim's vacant chair. Her chest tightened at the vivid memory, fresh and raw, of Jim deteriorating before her eyes. _She_ had done this. All of this had been because of her hubris.

She had sinned against the gods, and as expected, they had repaid her in kind. They had sent the witch goddess of old to enact her revenge. And Diana, in her naive belief that all she need do was speak to Jim, had only played into the woman's hands more. She had been so convinced that he would forgive her, see her side as she knew he was capable. It was almost worse that he _could_ see her side, but he had seen what she did not want to see.

She trusted him in the way she had trusted Etta or Bruce. It was deep, but not a two-way path. She expected Jim to keep her confidence and yet to not ask for more than she felt comfortable sharing. And while she'd finally realized she would speak with him, it had been too late. It was the same behavior from her days in darkness, hiding from Man's problems.

In watching Jim snap at himself - at Steve's ghost, it seemed - and struggling to make sense of it all, Diana knew for certain that she could not let him suffer anymore.

She would not sacrifice Jim's future for her past. Diana may have been prideful, but she was not her father. Humans were not pawns for her amusement. She would protect them. She would help them. Even before Circe had arrived, she had resolved herself to moving forward. She could feel her heart clench in physical longing as she knew it would mean giving up on any chance to have Steve back. Yet, she had to believe that Steve had hoped suffering would end when he made his sacrifice. If even one person suffered because of him, that was one too many. He would not want to return to her at the expense of another good man. And Jim deserved to live a full life, free from the horrors of a World War.

Taking a seat beside Jim's chair, she pulled the datapadd over and began to comb through the full sets of reports from the late George Kirk. If Jim's father had truly found this place before they did, then she agreed with him: this was a sign of where they needed to go.

Unfortunately, the majority of the data available was either completely irrelevant or beyond her understanding. The Argelians had sent a great deal of scientific and mathematical data, ways of proving that they were advanced.

The scientific data made no sense to her. She understood how to read an operations console in a rudimentary fashion. Quantum mechanics and stellar telemetry escaped her entirely. After slogging through a number of reports, feeling no more enlightened, she turned her attention to the cultural database.

A typical proto-Hellenistic culture. On the surface, they seemed like any Greek city-state. It wasn't until she read about the event identified as The Vision that she found the first strand to unravel the mystery.

Commander Spock stepped through the doors before she got much further. "My apologies, Ambassador. I have found it necessary to provide more detailed updates to certain members of the staff when it comes to the captain's health." Diana had a feeling one crew member in particular was just as concerned with the first officer as she was with the captain. The commander made his way over to the table and took a seat across from her. "They are… concerned."

"He worries about all of them. So they worry about him," She remarked, a smile tugging at her lips as she recalled Hikaru's observations. _We worry about him worrying about you._

"Be that as it may, I would much prefer to be here determining how we can help the captain." Diana extended the datapadd to him, but he simply held up one of his own. "I brought the research to the captain, and therefore possess my own copy of the records."

She couldn't help but feel relief at the fact that he was so prepared. For a man whose people valued logic over emotion, it was clear that Spock still gave those emotional bonds their due. "Good. Then, you're already familiar with it. Does The Vision sound familiar to you?"

"It does." Spock furrowed his brow, then proceeded to scan through the data in hand. "Commander Kirk mentioned that in his logs, but I have not had time to sufficiently review the information." Diana watched as his eyes raked over the text. He was sucking in information like a sponge. It reminded her of the voracity that she combed through ancient texts when she became an appraiser.

"From what I can gather," Diana pulled up the report she had been studying. "The Argelian calendar conducted a festival to The Vision in what was presumably a once or twice in a lifetime event." She sat back in the chair as the two of them studied their disciplines. "Many of Earth's older cultures worshipped comets in such a way."

"True, although I do not believe that this event was brought on by a comet." Standing, Spock made his way over to the other end of the briefing table and typed in a few commands on the control panel. After a moment, the table lit up to display a series of numbers. It did not take long for her to recognize stardates. "These are the dates during which the Argelian scientific records indicate high levels of tachyon and chroniton particles in the planet's atmosphere. Chronitons and tachyons are frequently associated with temporal anomalies."

Diana looked up from the table to face him. "Temporal anomalies."

"Time travel, Ambassador." She got the distinct impression that, despite the circumstances… he was amused. She lifted one of her own eyebrows to mirror his. "They are largely undocumented by Starfleet, but the _Enterprise_ crew has the dubious honor of having been at the front and center of one such temporal anomaly." Diana didn't bother to ask him for more information. She just stared him down until he conceded. "We encountered a ship of Romulans from an alternate future. They devastated Starfleet, destroying much of the fleet before the _Enterprise_ had even been christened."

"Amazing," She breathed. "I had no idea." She found herself recalling Barry Allen and his exploits. "The Flash… he utilized something we called the Speed Force in order to go back and forth in time. Perhaps he used the same forces…"

"Perhaps. Temporal theory and temporal anomalies are not the most widely regarded or socialized. Starfleet has, for the most part, chosen to bury unusual nature of the events. That being said, I believe this points to the theory that something has been luring Jim to the planet." Spock clasped his hands behind his back. "This such event seems to occur approximately every 38.38 years. A curious symmetry."

Diana's eye was drawn back to the dates on the table. She answered him absently as she tried to figure out what exactly about those dates was so compelling. "Harmonia herself was the goddess of symmetry. Perhaps her hand is the one that moves us ever closer." She paused as she reached out and scrolled through the list. "Do you track pre-Federation dates in terms of stardates as well?"

"Yes."

Diana continued to scroll. The years were easy enough. The conversion in stardates from month and day to day of the year was more difficult, and yet… "Stardate 1918.315. That was… November 11th, 1918." She glanced up at Spock. "That is the date Steve died."

Spock quirked an eyebrow. "Fascinating."

"And it is expected to arrive on Argelius IV on… Stardate 2264.66." Diana glanced at the chronometer, then up at Spock.

"That is precisely when we are expected to arrive."

Diana's heart skipped a beat as she felt the profound truth in what was before her. "We need to be there. For the Vision." Every day she spent on the _Enterprise_ in Circe's wake, the more she pushed her soul to regain its divinity. She had wished so long to simply be human, but it would not save the crew now. She could not afford to simply be Diana Prince.

"What do the Argelians claim happens during this event?"

It was a blessed distraction from the way her heart pounded in her throat. "It …" She grabbed for the datapadd. "It reads very similar to a few of the rituals of my forebears. During the festival, it is said that one could make petitions of the gods in the Temple of The Oracle. Oftentimes, people hoped for prophecy, but there are also accounts of speaking with the dead or even the gods themselves." As she spoke, Diana could feel her stomach swirl with unease, punctuated by that eerie symmetry from before. The people of Althea had not claimed to speak with their goddess. And even if they had, Diana now knew that they would have been speaking with Circe.

Who was accepting petitions and audience with these people? How long had they been doing so?

Diana scrolled further, continuing on for both Spock and her own benefit. "Most of these rituals through antiquity have the same results. If they are met with an audience, no records survive. But, the most recent records show that they changed the iconography of their primary deity approximately…" She trailed off, resigned and disquieted. "Two hundred years ago."

"The same timeframe in which Circe arrived on Althea." Spock stated, then quirked an eyebrow. "Perhaps there is another rival or long-lived individual that you banished as well?"

She shook her head. "No, Circe was the only one. I did not even banish Ares when I faced him last. He simply vanished." Troubled, Diana sought more information as to the identity of their primary god. "They included images of statues and prominent artwork displayed. How can I see it?" Making her way over to the control panel, she pressed the necessary buttons on the display at Spock's prompting until an image appeared on the table before them to replace the stardates.

"He appears humanoid." Spock remarked.

Humanoid, indeed.

"By the gods…" Diana's eyes filled with unbidden warmth, tears threatening to spill as she recognized the man she had once called.. "Brother…"

Spock moved to stand beside her. "Brother? As in, an Olympian? One of the Hellenistic gods?"

Diana nodded, a hand to her mouth as she looked him over. For so long, she had not seen a single god on the shores of Themyscira. Her prayers in the temples had gone unanswered, and she had begun the only strength her people needed as they built their own. But, the chiseled marble statue before her bore the uncanny resemblance to one of those many gods.

"Apollo. He aided me several times during the years I fought as Wonder Woman on Earth. And as the first god of Truth, he had only begun to give me ownership of that sacred duty. We left the planet before I could truly claim the title from him. If he is there, he is an ally. We must go to Argelius. To Delphi." Diana said, turning to face Spock. "He may be the only one who could help Jim. I'll pray to him myself if I have to."

The two regarded one another with a sense that they had come to their logical conclusion. Spock's tone seemed nearly… hopeful… as he replied. "I do believe there is sufficient evidence to suggest that the temporal energy could be centralized on this location. I will take this information to the captain."

Her relief quickly soured as she realized that while they had a solution, only one of them could deliver the news. "Of course…" Diana sighed, careful to mask most of her disappointment. But, if it kept him from deteriorating further, it would be worthwhile. "I will finish my research here and return to my quarters. When we reach Argelius IV, I need to be on the away team."

"I agree. Your knowledge of this individual and any other insights to the Argelian culture will be greatly appreciated."

Spock's communicator chirped in his pocket. With one deft move, he pulled it free and flipped it open. "Commander Spock here."

" _Jim's coming to. Just lettin' you know._ " Diana sighed in relief. At least there was something. _"You find anything?"_

"Yes, doctor, I believe we have." The commander replied, glancing over at Diana. "I will be on my way to Sickbay shortly. Spock out." Spock turned to leave, then paused and glanced back at her. It was almost as if he had realized that there was a social grace he had missed. "If I may ask a personal query, ambassador?"

Diana blinked, momentarily off-balance from the simply, yet formal way he asked. "Of course, Mister Spock."

"I would like to convey our conversation to the captain, but I would like to understand the nature of your desire to help him. Prior to this… unique situation, I assumed you and the captain had grown close. That you were interested in what could be construed as a romantic partnership." It was clear that Spock had spent a great deal of time thinking over how he would ask the question. Diana could feel her stomach clench as she prepared herself for an uncomfortable conversation. It would probably seem illogical to Spock, her reaction. "I told the captain I felt that you had simply exercised caution and wished to learn how to differentiate Jim's personality and experiences from those of Captain Trevor, but that the closeness you experienced was most likely genuine. Would you agree?"

The shock was plain on her face. She had no desire to hide how she felt. It didn't suit her well, and she had paid for it. But, it was a pleasant surprise. She couldn't help the warm smile on her face as she recognized his attempt to help her. "Yes. I would most certainly agree."

Spock considered her answer, then nodded. "Very well. I will be sure to convey appropriate sentiments to Jim. And I look forward to seeing you on the away mission."

The doors closed behind the commander as he left. Diana was left alone in the briefing room.

She turned slowly, facing the image again. She had been called many things. She had shared many of the gods' blessings in her days.

But, she shared one attribute with the god before her, one that she knew would hear her. Even if she had to scream as loud as needed to send his temple crashing to the ground.

"Phoebus Apollo, god of light and truth…" She breathed, reaching a hand out as if she could touch the static image. "I beseech you. If you do nothing else for me, do this: Show him the way."

As she closed her eyes, Diana had no way of noticing the image flicker in response.

* * *

Jim's head throbbed. No, it pounded with the force of a jackhammer.

As he tried to sit up, he found himself trying to recall if he'd ever actually seen an old jackhammer in action, or if that was another one of Steve's memories.

He was never more relieved to remember the mission on Thasus. There had been a team of archeologists. They had jackhammers in case their plas-cutters failed. And they had.

Jim's hand finally found purchase on the edge of the biobed. Slowly, he worked to pull himself back up. He wasn't entirely surprised to hear Bones bark in his ear no sooner than he'd gotten one leg swung off the bed.

"Are you outta your corn-fed mind? I just stopped you from buying the farm and here you are about to go to auction all over again." Any other time, Jim would have appreciated the cantankerous old worrywort's attitude. But, right now, it just made his head ache right behind his eyeballs.

"Jeez, Bones, could you maybe take it down to yellow alert? My headache has a headache." Jim grumbled, still stubbornly swinging his other leg over the biobed so he was sitting. His hand went to his face, rubbing his eyes furiously in the hopes of relieving the pressure behind them.

"Well, of course it does." Bones was still haranguing him, but at least he was quieter now. _Small miracles…_ "You decided it was a good idea to poke the sleeping neural pattern until it started to cook your brain."

"You know me, Bones, I like to keep you on your toes. Keeps you young." Jim remarked, chuckling a bit at his own joke. For a moment, he felt like himself. As if he was back on the bridge. Something told him that wouldn't last very long.

"Do me a favor and don't you worry your pretty head about me, all right, Jim?" When Jim opened his eyes, Bones was keying a dosage into the hypospray before pressing it to Jim's neck. "Cause me a lot more grief having a seizure than my heart needs, thank you."

Whatever Bones had dosed him with took effect almost instantly. A painkiller and probably a few other things, if he had to guess. It wasn't helping him remember exactly what he'd been doing before landing here. In fact, thinking itself seemed to put him in a bit of a haze. "I feel a bit… foggy."

"Well, you're still coming off of sedatives, so expect to be groggy for the next couple of hours." McCoy grabbed his medical tricorder and started to wave it over Jim's face. "Your vitals have leveled out. The second neural pattern looks to be fairly dormant, but…" He sighed and set the sensor back onto the top of the tricorder base "Can't be sure if that's from the drugs or from not seeing our resident ambassador."

Jim furrowed his brow as thoughts of Diana started to creep through the fog. They had been in the briefing room… he had started to get lost. He blinked the thoughts away, trying not to get caught in the exact same spiral that had apparently sent him here. "Is she all right?" He simply asked. If he had been seizing, he didn't want to think about what that had looked like to her.

It comforted Jim more than he could ever express that his first emotion was mortification that Diana had seen him in such a vulnerable and undignified state and not concern for how she'd treat him later. Yup, that was definitely Jim.

"She'll be fine." Bones said, almost dismissively in his confidence. "She took it upon herself to finish whatever research you and Spock started, though."

"Right, Argelius IV. Did we set course?" When Bones nodded, Jim took that as his signal to get back on the bridge. He wanted to be there, to see the planet. The answers were there. Delphi was there. He was sure of it.

Before Bones could bark at him again, the doors to Sickbay opened and in came his first officer.

"Spock." Jim said with a grin. "Good to see you. Are we to Argelius IV already?"

Spock closed the distance between them and stopped, regarding Jim with as close to a smile as he typically gave. "Not yet, captain, but we will reach there in a few hours. I actually came to provide additional information that Ambassador Prince and myself uncovered."

Jim's eyebrows shot up, and he motioned for Spock to continue. "Well, what'd you find?"

"There is evidence of a temporal anomaly that anchors to Argelius IV every 38 years. We are on track to arrive at the planet just before the next occurrence. The Argelians believe that one can speak to the dead or to their gods." Jim grinned. From the way Spock was talking, that last half was Diana's contribution.

The grin faded as he found more of their last conversation coming back to him. Where they stood. The trust lost. The fact that he wanted her off the ship. _You really know how to step in it, Jim._

Spock must have noticed his dour mood. "She sends her regrets that she could not see you in person, but I insisted that she rest until the away mission. We will need her."

Jim frowned. He wasn't so sure he agreed. Right now, his head was on straight. How long would it stay that way if he tried to talk to her now? "Glad to hear she's kept busy."

"She has been instrumental in our efforts. There was critical information that we could not have surmised without her… unique perspective." Spock glanced over at Bones in a way that suggested it was not good for the captain. "She has expressed nothing but her commitment to restoring your mental well-being. And as such, we feel that there may be resources available on Argelius IV that may help with the secondary neural pattern."

Jim glanced over at him, thoughtful. "So, what? I go there and ask the gods to take this guy out of my head?"

"It is possible, although I am fairly certain that Diana believes the 'god' on Argelius IV is uniquely qualified to handle this. Perhaps he is telepathic."

Bones frowned, shook his head. "I don't like it. A temporal anomaly ain't magic, and if it was just a matter of being telepathic…" He crossed his arms over his chest and squared off against the Vulcan. "Well, hell, Spock, you could've done something by now."

Spock bristled slightly. "A Vulcan mind meld is not a light undertaking, Doctor. There are significant risks to both parties."

Jim finally stood, ignoring Bones's glare his way. "Hang on, Bones might be onto something. Is that an option, Spock? I mean, I did it with Ambassador Spock. Maybe that makes it easier, or less risky." Jim found himself thinking back to when he had met the older Spock, how they had shared so much knowledge and emotion in the blink of an eye. The mind meld was _incredibly_ powerful.

The department store in London suddenly came to mind. The two Spocks in Edwardian garb, casually discussing… what was it? Universe-ending paradoxes.

The more he thought about it, the more it seemed like the right idea. By the time Jim was about to voice that, Spock had apparently already considered the notion himself.

"Perhaps…" Spock began, resting his fingers on his bottom lip as he analyzed the situation. "The Vulcan concept of the soul is quite protected among my people. In fact, the _katra_ , as it were, was often considered a myth. Yet, in these last days, I have found myself considering its existence all the more." Stepping away, Spock paced the length of the Sickbay as he spoke. "There are a number of Vulcan rituals, highly specialized and very rarely performed, that utilize the mind meld as a technique for healing or ritual cleansing."

"Cleansing?" Bones scoffed. "You pointy-eared bastards don't strike me as the ritualistic and spiritual type."

"On the contrary, Doctor, Vulcan rites of passage are quite revered." Spock said as a rebuttal. "Many of these customs are from the days before Vulcans learned to purge all emotion. The ones that remain have as much influence towards that goal as they do scientific necessity. There are many illnesses that Vulcans are susceptible to that cannot be treated by physical medicine."

Jim could practically hear the steam start hissing out of Bones's ears at the very notion that he couldn't cure something. "Maybe if you would share that information, we could figure out a way - "

"Doctor, it is not for me to decide what the Vulcan Science Academy wishes to share with Starfleet Medical at large." Spock's response seemed to momentarily soothe the doctor's ego, proving yet again that most of their animosity was manufactured mischief. "But, complex neurological diseases have been cured with the rite of _fal-tor-voh_ , a mind meld with a family member that allows the brain to re-establish its neural peptide levels."

Jim didn't intend to give Spock such a blank look, but his mind was still in a bit of fog as he said dumbly, "You think my problem is peptides."

"That is merely an example, Jim." Spock said, a touch of mirth in his tone. "In fact, if I were to characterize your condition, it is actually similar to an affliction in which a Vulcan's katra has been somehow split from his or her body. It is incredibly rare, but can occur. The ritual, _fal-tor-pan_ , is complex and dangerous to all parties involved, but essentially allows for a katra to re-integrate."

Jim felt that all too common flip of his stomach when he just _knew_ he was onto something. "Then, we need to get to Argelius IV, because if we're going to fix this, this is the only way to do it." As he smiled, feeling galvanized by the plan they had, he started to make his way over to the doors. "Now, all I need to do is find Chief..."

As Jim left the medbay, he missed seeing the confused and puzzled faces on his Chief Medical Officer and Chief Science Officer.

He assumed it was because the drugs made him feel so level. But, it wasn't that. Nothing had triggered the memory. Jim didn't even realize the memory was Steve's.

* * *

"Computer, open secure channel. Command code Cale-Zeta-Four-Nine-Two."

ACKNOWLEDGED. CHANNEL OPEN.

"This is She-Wolf. I received your message."

" _She-Wolf, this is Quinnius. I have tracked the prey to the stated location, and they are now changing course. Headed to sector outside of Yorktown's range."_

She grinned. "Good. Follow them. When they stop, you know your orders. I want the Themysciran alive. The crew of the _Enterprise_ … kill them all."

She cut the transmission and typed in her Starfleet Intelligence command code.

DELETE RECORD OF TRANSMISSION.

RECORD DELETED.

BY AUTHORITY OF ADMIRAL VERONICA CALE.


	25. Song for Eurydice, Part 1: Act IV

**Song for Eurydice, Part 1: Act IV**

By all accounts, Argelius IV was an untouched paradise. As the _Enterprise_ dropped out of warp into the system, the thick asteroid belt around the system had kept it relatively hidden from sensors. With some smooth piloting on Sulu's part, they had made it through the belt and to the central planet within hours. In that time, Jim enlisted Spock in finding appropriate attire for the away team. He'd had every intention of doing it himself, but when he'd gone to Engineering to see the Chief and realized that he had _not_ been thinking of Scotty, he'd thought twice.

It had been just as well. Those hours seemed to fly by. With a cup of coffee and the stars to keep him occupied… Jim wasn't sure how much time he'd lost before he'd been told they were in orbit around Argelius IV, hidden in the dark side of the planet's moon.

The itching sensation that he was onto something, that this _was_ Delphi and that he _needed_ to be there, kept him on task long enough to change into clothes that Spock had chosen for him. The blue tunic had seen better days, but had served Jim well on away missions in the past. They hadn't had much opportunity to perform so many pre-First Contact missions in the first three years of the tour. Now, he was getting to make up for lost time…

When he spotted Diana, her armor carefully hidden under a black cloak as she stepped onto the transporter pad, he could feel his heart rate jump. _That's still a nice outfit,_ he thought, smiling to himself as he recalled her scaring the shit out of him in the springs. For a moment, something told him that memory wasn't right, but he brushed it away. He was rather fond of it, and just reminded him that Diana did not take no for an answer. About anything.

It was becoming more and more difficult to recognize when he wasn't even thinking like _Jim_. And his pulse didn't steady, even after the transporter beam deposited Diana, Spock and Jim on a rocky gully near the capital. It reminded him of Greece. Modern Greece. 23rd century Greece. Lush and green with smooth, modern buildings alongside ruins such as the Parthenon, they could see it all in the distance. He'd made sure to have Scotty beam them just out of any modern sensor range, which meant a hike.

As the last of the transporter beam shimmered away, he was hit by a dry rush of hot air. Coupled by the dusty, rocky terrain, he glanced behind him to check if the row of German biplanes would be waiting for him.

It wasn't the Ottoman Empire. He was a few centuries and several hundred light years away.

Spock's voice anchored him back to the present. His science officer pointed them to a route he'd scoped out, and the three of them quietly set out towards the capital. As they marched, the last of the sedatives Bones had given him finally wore off, so he had no excuse not to be his normal, charismatic self.

For Spock, that must have felt like bliss. For Jim, that would have most likely been torture under typical circumstances.

Instead, he just followed after his first officer, stony-faced and focused. No banter came to mind. All he could do was look over his shoulder at Diana, then around the barren quarry-like terrain below. He was looking for and waiting for…. For _something_.

Whatever it was he was waiting for, he knew that the metal taste of blood in his mouth, the acrid stench of shrapnel and burning flesh followed in that _something's_ wake.

The sky was blue and clear on this planet. But, it was gray and his feet sloshed through mud on Belgian soil. _Just focus on the mission. You can't help these people._ Steve Trevor's logic started to sound better and better as they neared the capital. It started to feel like he'd never been the same guy who broke the Prime Directive to save a civilization from volcanic decimation. Not anymore. Now, he just needed the mission. _One last mission, one last dirty deed…_

 _Don't let Charlie get to you. He doesn't mean anything by it._ He wasn't the only one carrying another pack on his shoulders.

As they came into view of the first guards at the main gate, saw a flash of something in the sunlight. _Muzzle flash, take them out first -_ He reached for his pistol, then remembered it wasn't there.

Instead, someone took his hand. He glanced over towards her, but he instantly recognized the touch. That touch set everything on fire and reminded him that the war had taken _almost_ everything from him. But, at least he'd met her. "Diana…" he breathed, not entirely sure why she'd stopped him. How had Jim held back all this time? How had he managed to keep those feelings buried so deeply? Was it because he'd told himself it was a friendship he was carefully cultivating? He'd known Diana for months. Months longer than Steve had had time with her. _I asked for more time and he spends it pussyfooting around like my dad's barn cats._

"Before we go inside, can we speak for a moment?" This wasn't exactly a good time for it, but she had a knack for trying to have conversations when he needed to focus. She could draw his attention from anything. _Almost anything_. The thought gave him pause. He thought of the plane. His hand started to shake. What was he forgetting about the plane? What plane? This was No Man's Land.

He glanced over at the main gates. It didn't seem right. Didn't look like typical British camp construction. "Ah, this isn't a good time," he said, surveying the situation before turning to face her. Of course, the moment he recognized that subtle pout, he crumbled like a cookie. Sighing, he propped his hands on his hips and turned to face her. "What is it? We're not exactly well-covered here."

"I know, but before we reach Delphi, I need you to know that no matter what price Apollo asks to save you, I am willing to pay it." The sincerity in her voice was a pale reflection of her expression. Her hand remained on his wrist. For a moment, they were past the No Man's Land, to the victory after. All of it blurred together, timeless, disjointed.

Which made telling her 'no' seem easy this time around. "No. Diana, I'm not gonna let you do that. You don't know what could happen when we get there - "

She spoke his name. No, not _his_ name. Another name. A name that didn't feel right. It wasn't one that dragged corpses and espionage through the mud, through his nightmares. "You may be the captain, but I know him. You do not. We have no idea what will be ahead of us, save that I must hope I can reach them."

Steve shook his head, exasperated that they seemed to always come back to the same argument. It was always a losing one, and eventually, he'd just stop trying to tell her no. _Except, you never do. Because she couldn't be on that plane. You were._

"Jim, please don't fight me…" She coaxed, still holding his wrist tight. _That's not me… that's not me, I don't know who that is…_ "You're getting worse, and I don't wish to lose you to this…"

He was thinking about the plane. Why was the air getting thinner? _The radiation gets to you… limbs first, then your lungs…_ No, no. That wasn't him talking. Chief had said the payload was hydrogen. Flammable. So, then it was the altitude, right? _It's the warp core…_ It was his voice, but it _wasn't_ him. It didn't make any sense…

He faltered, stepping closer to Diana without intending to. In a breath, her arms were around him, holding him close.

He was going out of his mind. It was as if the lasso was around him, dragging truth after inconvenient truth out of him. Only it wasn't the truth, they were images of a fantastical vessel in the stars… of people he didn't recognize…

His head was splitting open.

"Jim?" The voice sounded familiar. _Spock_. He knew it, but he didn't. He was steady, like the Chief. "Captain, are you alright?" He sounded far away, even as Diana held him up. He wished it would rain. When it stopped, the mud caked around his shoes and weighed him down.

"We need to keep moving…" The captain breathed, forcing himself upright. "Next crossing's a day's march away. We can't stop here."

"We're not in Belgium," DIana said, a plea in her voice. "We are going to Delphi. You will see the truth, I promise you." Her hand brushed his cheek and he glanced over at her, a rakish smile on his face.

"And a promise is unbreakable." He felt sick. It was all false bravado. Something was very wrong. "I remember."

"That was not your life as Jim Kirk," She said, as if reminding him. He furrowed his brow at her, perplexed. Another riddle. Like Ares. Like the vessel in the stars.

 _My ship. The Enterprise. I'm her captain._ No, he didn't captain a vessel, he wasn't Navy.

"Spock, what's happening?" She asked as he shuddered against her.

Spock was beside him, had some device out and was waving it over him. "The neural patterns are in conflict again. The Doctor warned of such a possibility." His brow furrowed as he reviewed the glowing lights on the device. "The dominant neural pattern is _not_ the captain."

Diana's eyes widened, and she turned to face the man in her arms again. "Steve?"

That lopsided grin grew. "Hey, angel."

That splitting pain made his eyesight white, and he cried out, buckling. He could feel something wet and hot running down his nose, down to his mouth. He tasted iron. Had he been gassed? Oh, _shit_ …

He could still hear Diana's voice, but the words didn't make sense. And then the other voice, but he couldn't comprehend the voices. He was getting lost.

"I need to find Chief…" He breathed, completely unaware that the nosebleed and the pain in the back of his temples were from a seizure. Steve focused on Diana, whose arms were still around him even as he found himself kneeling on the ground. He reached up, slipping his hands to her face, holding tight. "Something's wrong. We need to find Chief."

The other voice - Spock - cut through the warm haze of his memory. "We have gotten the attention of the guards. They are approaching us. We will need to stabilize the captain. I suggest that you encourage the dominant neural pattern until we have located the temple."

It took him a moment to realize there were tears in her eyes, barely restrained. He had no idea what she was feeling. Was she upset with him? Was she upset with Man's World, as she called it? Was she disappointed in him? No. That memory was all too clear. On the guard tower at Ludendorff's facility. "Oh, Steve…" She breathed, reaching out to run her fingers through his hair. "I have missed you so much…" He recalled the same sensation in her bed, feeling profoundly loved. She looked at him with a poignant mix of sorrow and joy that he had never seen before. _God, she really is an angel…_

"Hurry, Ambassador." Spock urged.

"Steve, we have to keep moving. We must reach the Temple of Delphi."

"On your island?" He asked, recognizing the mythology after a moment of consideration. The fog had started to lift, just enough.

"Yes. We are very close."

Other voices had started to approach them.

Steve turned to face them and steadied. "We need to move…" He breathed, reaching for his pistol. "Those are the bad guys…"

"Steve, no!" Diana caught hold of his wrist. Not for the first time, he felt like a kitten getting slung around. "They are not the Germans. Look closer. They are Amazons."

He narrowed his eyes, watching the approaching crowd. The other thoughts and images seemed to fade away. Come to think of it, it looked more like Paradise Island. "But, I thought you said there were no men." He noticed one of the approaching group with a distinctly masculine build.

"You showed me that mankind can be just and wise.' Diana urged him to his feet, slowly releasing his wrist. "We have accepted a few onto our island. You must let me speak with them. Pay them respect."

His head was finally clearing, but now he had the dull fog from a migraine. He wasn't too keen on having similar treatment from the first time he'd met Queen Hippolyta. As Diana stepped past him, he kept staring ahead, muttering, "Well, that's neat."

Diana made her way over to the crowd, hurriedly beginning a conversation that he vaguely recognized as the same language the Amazons spoke amongst themselves. It didn't make a whole lot of sense, Amazons in Belgium…

 _Spock hasn't been to Themyscira, either…_ That same errant voice again. It wouldn't shut up.

Diana waved him forward after another moment and he made his way over to the main gate with her. It reminded him of the grand structures on the island, so… it wasn't the strangest thing he'd ever seen.

Once they passed the threshold of the gates, the sounds of commerce and celebration filled his ears. But, it wasn't Themyscira. The market was still more muted than this. Here, the crowds were vibrant and raucous.

 _Because this is Argelius IV… Because this is a mission from Starfleet._

Steve squeezed his eyes shut as the thoughts came faster and faster. He stumbled over to the first surface he could: the wall to an alleyway past a stand of radiant gemstones for purchase.

 _That's not me. I'm not Steve._ The voice was louder. The plane, he could hear the plane as it climbed higher…

He was leaving Diana behind again…

 _Steady finger on the trigger…_

Another lancing pain went through his temple and for just a moment, he knew.

He was Jim Kirk.

This was Delphi.

This was _exactly_ where he was supposed to be.

"Spock…" Jim breathed, using the wall to brace himself up as he struggled to turn around and look for his first officer. The capital market was furiously busy. At first, the voices all sounded like the Amazonian language he'd heard when Diana had brought him to the senate building.

Standard began to filter to his ears. The communicator in his pocket couldn't have had enough time to process the language through the universal translator, though. Maybe it was because of the probe. Had the probe data been in this language? They'd read their reports in Standard, but it could have just been the benefit of time and the larger Federation database.

The Federation. It was another anchor for him. As he looked through the streets, he could see the modern architecture, all of the fairly modern technology. Hover-drones sold alongside scarves.

But, he couldn't account for when or how he'd gotten there. One minute, they'd beamed down and started walking. And next, he was here.

He hadn't just lost time in place. Now, he was going places.

Jim turned, hoping to spot Spock or Diana, but found that they'd been separated in the crowd of market goers. He started towards one of the market stalls, thinking that it was better to work with the traffic rather than against it. As he did so, avoiding people who were intent on reaching their next shopping venue of choice, he scanned the crowd both visually and auditorily.

If he couldn't see them, maybe he could hear them. He didn't have much luck, but he could hear snippets of conversation. People were eagerly making their last purchases before "The Vision" arrived.

For just a second, Jim at least felt validated. They were in the right place. He just needed the temple.

As Jim passed another stand selling household statues of The Oracle, he reached a thoroughfare of some kind. The boulevard was blocked off from anything but pedestrian traffic, and even then, people seemed to be lined up on either side. It reminded him of parades back on Earth.

From down the road, he heard - rather than saw - a horn blowing in the distance. The sound reverberated through buildings of metal and of stone. The market behind him went quiet, and the boulevard of pedestrians stilled.

He could _feel_ something coming in the air, and an energy around him. He'd been at rituals on various planets, but he'd never really felt it before. Rationally, he wondered if it was some sort of collective psionic energy. Maybe all of them were low-level telepaths on Delphi.

If that was the case, how did no one realize he wasn't from here?

Bass tones came from the same area of the boulevard where the horn had sounded for attention. When he was in school back in Iowa, he'd taken classical studies and world religions. It reminded him of Gregorian chanting, but this was wordless, a low wave of energy and sound that seemed to fill the boulevard from the ground up.

It never ceased to amaze James Kirk how a group could create resonant, profound emotional reactions in people. And it seemed even he wasn't immune.

In rows two across they came.

First, the men: bearded, older… and white-eyed. Jim's jaw went slack as they came into full view. They were in gold chitons, belted and bangled with more golden jewelry. Their hoods were blood red, the sashes over each shoulder. But, their eyes… They were white and luminescent.

One of the women next to him muttered something. The universal translator wasted no time in reading it back to him.

" _As Orpheo gave his eyes in penance for his sin, we thank you for your sight to the Oracle. May Phoebus Apollon bless you. May Phoebus Apollon show the way."_

The platitude - or prayer - passed around the crowd in hushed tones as the men passed. Many of those marching bore standards. One held a banner with a raven made of some indigenous, black precious stone. Another held a harp. Ancient design, to be sure, but it seemed like it may have been influenced by earth.

It was too close to Earth. There was another hand at work. Jim was sure of it, just as he was sure that Diana must have known it, too.

Occasionally, the horn sounded again, accompanied by the occasional drumbeat. The procession continued down the boulevard and as the men passed, Jim could spot the women that followed after. They also wore gold chitons, blood red sashes wrapped around their heads and draped across only one shoulder. They continued to walk forward, but they were blindfolded.

Another woman began another mantra, which rippled around the crowd.

" _She is sacred, she will be Vision. Apollon Daphnephoros, Apollon Pythios."_

Transfixed by the ritual around him, Jim felt distinctly unlike the captain of the _Enterprise._ For a moment, he found himself feeling remarkably archeological, not scientific.

" _We ask favor, Apollon Delphinios. We ask for Vision, Apollon Delphinios."_ One by one, supplicants began to fall in line behind the procession, but at great distance from a single figure who seemed to button up the formation.

A figure who was not dressed like the others.

Jim knew the black coat. He had seen it before, in his dreams. He knew the hat and he knew the boots.

"Chief…" Without hesitation, Jim wound his way and pushed through the crowd, following after the supplicants. " _Chief!_ "

The figure turned to face him, tipped his hat with a smile, then continued on.

"No, wait!" Jim pled, forcing his way through. He lost sight of the man as the supplicants crowded him, but was undeterred. He wouldn't be stopped. Chief was the only one who could guide him on the journey, he had said as much.

As Jim made his way around the corner…

Steve bolted down the trench, determined not to lose Chief, either.

* * *

Two hours had passed on Argelius IV since the away team had beamed down, and if there was one thing Commander Spock excelled at, it was punctuality. And since Hikaru had to keep the chair warm while the captain and commander were both gone, he was never more relieved to hear Lieutenant Uhura alert him that Spock had hailed the ship.

"Go ahead and put him through, Lieutenant." Hikaru said, sitting up and giving Spock his full attention. "Commander. How's it going down there?"

" _We have successfully gained access to the capital city. According to Ambassador Prince, the local dialect spoken by the Argelians is the same as Themysciran. We posed as traders from another city on the Northern Continent."_

Behind him, Sulu could hear Uhura stand and walk over towards him. It was always interesting how the crew had their own non-verbal ways of showing they were joining the conversation. "But, they're pre-warp." She said, exchanging a curious glance with Sulu. "At this rate, we'll have enough for the Federation Archeological Council to chew on for decades."

Sulu nodded, a touch of a smile on his lips. It was certainly turning out to be an interesting coincidence. Having Diana onboard meant they were confronting this particular phenomenon at an increasing frequency. "I guess that means you're on the right track, then." He offered, hoping his commanding officer would be a little more forthcoming. As he did so, he heard the turbolift doors open behind him and glanced back to spot Dr. McCoy stepping onto the bridge. He was like clockwork. If there was an away mission, he never missed a check-in.

" _Agreed. Based on the activity in the capital, the phenomenon that Ambassador Prince hopes will assist the captain will be arriving shortly. I trust the Enterprise is still in position around the dark side of the moon."_

Sulu's smile widened at Spock's adherence to protocol. It was always calming in times like this. His stomach hadn't stopped rolling nervously since they went planetside. "Affirmative, sir, we are holding position." As he glanced back at McCoy, he asked the question that he knew was on every bridge officer's mind. "How's the captain holding up?"

" _Is Doctor McCoy present on the bridge?"_

The doctor scowled. "I'm here." After Spock didn't immediately reply, he crossed his arms over his chest and also sent a furtive glance Sulu's way. "Dammit, Spock, what's wrong?"

" _During our travel to the capital, the captain began to experience another conflict between the two neural patterns._ " The trio on the bridge tensed. _"When a neural pattern took precedence, it was that of Captain Steve Trevor. His condition is worsening."_

"Good God, man." McCoy blurted. "Why didn't you _lead_ with that? We need to get him back to the _Enterprise._ "

" _That will prove more difficult than following this through to completion, Doctor._ " Spock's tone suggested that he'd also considered the possibility, then thought better of it. _"We have been separated from him upon entry to the capital. The Ambass - will - t - locate -"_ Spock's voice suddenly slowed to a metallic, digital crawl, then cut out entirely.

By the time Sulu had turned to face the comms officer, Uhura was already back at her station, frantically trying to get the signal back. "I can't locate the communicator signal. Transmission's completely lost."

As a helmsman, Sulu's days were often spent listening to his intuition. Coming out of warp, executing maneuvers, they were as much about the command codes as they were about _feeling_ when the ship would finally execute. And right now, his intuition told him that it wasn't a simple communications failure.

"Try to get them back." He said, then turned to the crewman in the operations console beside him. "Run a sensor sweep. Look for anything out of the ordinary. Go to yellow alert." Sulu knew the protocols, he'd sat in the chair before.

After a moment, the crewman at the console spoke again. His voice had pitched higher than he probably intended, but he was young and clearly concerned. "I'm detecting tachyon particles."

"Where?"

"I... " The crewman - Acosta - hesitated, clearly confused by what he was reading. "Everywhere, sir?"

McCoy barked back at the kid, voicing what Sulu was thinking. "What, in all of the Alpha quadrant? Can you narrow it down a bit, kid?"

"Immediately behind and around us." The crewman pointed to his sensor logs, stricken that he couldn't make sense of it. "Almost like it's… it's… run the perimeter…"

Sulu finished the thought as his intuition was proven right. "Like it's a ship surveying us. A _cloaked_ ship." He whipped around in the chair, focusing on the viewscreen. "Red Alert, shields up!"

The klaxons sounded as the ambient lights dimmed to accommodate the red bars across the bridge. Sulu was already thinking of his next move. "Come about! We need visuals!"

As if the invisible enemy knew they were being hunted, Sulu's stomach dropped when the gray D7 class warbird decloak on the viewscreen. There was still so little they knew about cloaking technology, but based on their last few encounters, they couldn't fire while cloaked. Having to decloak meant the _Enterprise_ had beat the clock.

"Hail them," Sulu ordered Uhura from the chair, expecting that a balance of power had been established. A standoff, where both parties would have to engage with the only weapons available to them that could tip the scale: words. It was the match he was always prepared for.

"No response," Uhura sounded as annoyed as she was concerned. He could certainly understand that impulse.

"They're firing weapons." Crewman Acosta called, expecting the same as everyone else on the bridge. The Romulans, or Klingons, maybe, would fire and the shot would deflect off of the shields.

Sulu was nearly thrown clear out of the chair when the warbird's phasers ripped across the underside of the _Enterprise's_ saucer section. It was by sheer luck that he reached out and grabbed Doctor McCoy by a fistful of his uniform sleeve, holding the doctor from being hurled across the room. The explosions pitched the vessel nose-up and shook every bulkhead. "What the hell just happened?" Sulu shouted over the klaxons. "I need a damage report! Our shields were supposed to be up!"

"They are, sir!" Acosta held onto his station with one hand as his other hand flew over the console. "They - the phasers went right through them!"

Sulu finally released McCoy as he and the Doctor both realized that the navigator had taken a faceful of plasma from a power overload. As the doctor went after his charge, Sulu had to keep his eye on the viewport, and more importantly, think of the next move.

Meanwhile, Acosta rattled off the damage. "We have hull breaches on decks 4, 5, and 6. And we've lost long-range sensors."

Sulu pursed his lips, then punched in a command on the console beneath his right hand. "Bridge to Engineering! Mister Scott, we have a D7 warbird firing _through_ our shields! How the hell do we stop it?"

" _What? That's impossible!"_ Scotty barked, obviously as distressed as they were. From the scattered shouting coming over the line, it sounded as if he had repair crews on their way to the afflicted decks. _"Are ye sure?!"_

Before Sulu could snap back at the Chief Engineer, the ship rocked again, just as violently before. "Evasive action!" He ordered. The helmsman at the conn had already begun to program the maneuver, but the ship was sluggish from the abuse.

"External comms are down!" Acosta said as he held fast to the console, white-knuckled. "They're targeting the deflector dish!"

"Helmsman, whatever you do, you keep that dish out of their crosshairs! Full impulse, we need to get them away from the planet!" Sulu's heart pounded in his throat, blood rushed through his ears."And return fire on the ship!" With the immediate orders given, he had to turn his attention back to the problem at hand. "Scotty! I still need an answer. How could they be penetrating our shields so easily?"

" _Och, give me a minute!"_ The Scotsman snapped. Sulu silently hoped that he had the answer.

"Our phasers have no effect!" Another crewman shouted as the bridge steeled for another blow.

Sulu held out a moment longer, his cool exterior much more resilient than his sense of inner calm. That was shot. "Scotty, do you have an answer?"

" _I dinnae! Maybe! It's impossible! They're phasers and shields, they're all keyed to the same frequencies as ours! It's like they've cracked Federation command codes or somethin'! I can reprogram ours, but it'll take time. Time we don't have!"_ Sulu's heart sank as he realized that the only way out of this competition would be to sacrifice the match. He had to hope that the captain would have agreed and done the same.

"Pull us back." He said, ignoring McCoy's lethal glare. The more he spoke, the more the path ahead became clear and he could regain that inner calm. He wasn't going to die today. The crew wouldn't. But, it couldn't be won right now. "Come about and vent as much excess plasma as we have. I want us to blanket the area and confuse their sensors." Sulu quickly punched one of the nav buttons on the captain's chair, bringing up an overlay of the system in the top right corner of the viewscreen. "Go back towards the asteroid belt, then change course to 227 mark 6 mark 3."

The helmsman turned back to face him. "Sir?"

"That's an order, crewman, let's not waste any more time." He said, clenching his hand into a fist as he waited for the orders to execute.

The ship came about and plasma clouded the screen before steered back towards the belt. As the _Enterprise_ moved at full impulse, darting away from the warbird, he watched the sector markers on screen, waiting for their course to seem like a direct one to the belt.

Just past the gas giant that made up the sixth planet in the system. "Change course, helm!"

"Aye, sir!" The helmsmen swung the ship around and into the upper atmosphere of the gas giant. The moment they hit the gravitational pull, the vessel shuddered in protest.

"Full stop. Acosta, more power to shields and thrusters. Helm, you need to get us into a geosynchronous orbit." After one more affirmation, the bridge went silent save for McCoy ordering a site-to-site transport for the downed navigator.

As if to signal that they were - temporarily - out of danger, the shuddering came to a halt and the navigator disappeared in a shimmer of transporter energy.

"Geosynchronous orbit established. We are maintaining relative position within the gas giant." The helmsman repeated, before finally relaxing a bit.

Sulu exhaled, the same as he did when he heard the whistle blow to call the end of the match. Steadying himself, he ran a hand over his face before he finally caught McCoy's eye. "With any luck, this buys us the time Scotty needs."

"I don't reckon they'll try to follow us in here." McCoy agreed, glancing back at the viewscreen. Even in their position in the atmosphere, it was clear that short range sensors were all coming up blank and scrambled as well. The gas giant's ruddy brown clouds swirled around them and below them. But, at least they were hiding the ship. "But, we just left the captain, Spock and Diana all down on that planet. Think they have any idea what's coming?"

Sulu opened his mouth to reply, then paused. The colors were changing in the clouds. Not indicative of a ship, but of something else. Slowly, he rose from the chair and made his way closer. "If that's what I think it is, then they have a better idea than we do."

"And what's that?"

Sulu pointed to the ribbon that tore across the sky over Argelius VI, then continued past them. It looked like some sort of golden wave and lightning storm combined. It rolled and writhed across the horizon as it made its way towards Argelius IV. It would have looked beautiful if not for the way it made Sulu think of the _tatsu_ painting his parents had kept in their home. The way the long dragon seemed to undulate even on canvas. What was the tale his mother used to read to him? The first dragon, Yamata-no-Orochi. The serpent had eight heads and eight tails. And it was as fearsome as it was great. And it had a taste for those more innocent.

"I think that's their temporal anomaly. And it's headed right for them."

* * *

Diana was torn between profound frustration with herself and profound sorrow that she had once again let both Steve and Jim slip through her fingers. She had only gone to speak with the Delphine guard for a moment after guaranteeing safe passage. In that moment, Steve - and that had most certainly been _Steve_ \- had vanished. By the time she and Spock had reached the market, they had only barely seen him disappear after the processional to the temple. With the crowd, it would have been impossible to catch up to him through conventional means.

And even Diana had to admit that the stakes were too high to risk alerting the Delphines to her unique physiology.

It would have been all too easy for her to lose herself in the reality of the situation. To see Steve so plainly, to know that he had truly been given a second chance, a start without the war, without poverty, without the suffering she knew he had to endure… all of that was in Jim Kirk. And all of that was at risk. And yet, to have him back for just a moment… Diana knew if she lingered in that place of memory, she may never return. Steve had lived and he had died. If she was to save him, it would have to be in saving Jim first.

Once they lost contact with the _Enterprise_ , Spock and Diana had decided that their only logical course of action was continue the search for the temple. If they all had the same goal in mind, they would reach it. And finding the temple was quite simple. With the procession to the god Apollo on its way to the temple in full splendor, they simply followed the crowd of supplicants until they could spot the building from the Argelian records.

"That is most certainly the Temple of Delphi." Diana said as the two of them rounded a corner, making their way down a deserted alley some distance from the crowd. Upon seeing the roof of the building, they'd had to backtrack to avoid much more of a delay. "What I do not understand is how they can speak Themysciran. Unless Apollo has changed all of the planet to speak our language in his two hundred years, but that does not seem likely. Amazons - we studied all language and its roots. Gods? They touch a man's mind and may learn its secrets."

"What you are suggesting is indicative of invasive telepathy, Ambassador. That would be a violation of Federation and Starfleet ordinances on the treatment of non-telepathic species." Spock remarked. "It is quite likely that both Circe and Apollo would be remanded back to Federation custody for significant punishment."

"I have considered the thought myself," She admitted, frowning. "It pains me to see this place." At the way Spock glanced over at her, she could tell he was skeptical. She came to a halt at a crossroads between a few smaller, older buildings and turned to face him. "You must understand: I do not trust the gods. Not truly. It is difficult to do so when you know how often they play to their own whims, even at the expense of others. Once we have helped Jim…" She faltered as the image of the man she'd seen earlier reminded her of how her heart ached. "And Steve... " She cleared her throat, trying to focus on the greater concern that they both shared. "Apollo _will_ answer for what has happened here. And if what he has done is unjust, then he will answer to me, not to the Federation."

"That is not - " Spock began, but Diana's expression brooked no argument. She crossed her arms across her chest and furrowed her brow, daring him to challenge her on how she should handle her gods.

Wisely, the Vulcan did not offer any additional color. Instead, he looked back down at his tricorder, examining the readings before slipping it back under the purple tunic he wore

Before they could continue any further, Diana realized something had changed around them. Like a static charge in the air. This was not magic, but something… else…

"The Speed Force." She breathed, suddenly aware that something was coming _very_ close to them. "I have felt this only once before. When the Flash and I travelled moments back in time."

Spock pursed his lips, concerned. "Then we are in proximity to the temporal anomaly. I suggest we hurry to the temple."

"But, Jim - "

"Has already arrived. I have found his comm signal." Spock motioned ahead of them.

Diana wasted no time, especially given that she knew she had to restrain her speed.

The temple was closer than it seemed, or at the least, they had chosen a surprisingly direct route. The crowd had made their way to a great courtyard in front of the steps. Every man and woman had fallen to their knees, hands outstretched, facing the sun. Diana knew the gesture to honor Apollo well. The god of light was quite fond of his supplicants that saw him as their source of warmth. Prayers were murmured, but no one seemed to care that Spock and Diana had begun to walk past them. It was almost as if…

As if they were expected.

Of course. The Temple of Prophecy would not have allowed them to get this far if it had not been foretold.

In less pressing moments, Diana knew she would think about this image for a long time to come. In the future, she would consider the supplicants, the prayers they muttered to both Apollo and the Oracle, and the way the doors to the temple had slowly begun to close even as the sky darkened above them.

But, in the moment, all she could think about was who she saw lying on the temple steps, curled up and writhing.

Whether James T. Kirk or Steven Trevor, she didn't care. He was in pain and it had to end. That was all that mattered.

Within moments, Diana was there beside him, pulling him to his feet and looping his arm over her shoulders. In truth, he weighed nothing to her physically. But, his suffering… that weighed on her in an entirely different fashion.

"I lost him… I lost him…" He muttered. Then, as if he had just realized her presence, he looked up at her. "Diana…" He breathed. His face had smeared with blood, his pupils were wide dilated, and he was pale. "Please don't go.." He babbled, pulling her close. "I need you, I need you on my ship, you understand?"

It was Jim. For the moment. Diana swallowed down the sickened way her stomach turned, and she held him close. "I will never leave you. I promised. But, we must get you inside."

"Ambassador." Spock called, motioning to the sky. "I concur. We have run out of time."

Diana turned to where he was facing. She had seen many things, marvelous and terrible, but none quite like the ribbon of light arcing towards the temple. As it approached, she held Jim closer and backpedalled towards the large wooden doors. "Let's go, Spock! Come on!" She ordered. She had seen what happened when mortals were too close to divine grace, unbridled such as this... Vision. She did not wish to see what would happen if they remained outside, unprepared for ritual.

As they finally stepped inside, the doors barely had time to close as the ribbon grew closer and closer in the sky. As the oaken doors slammed shut, bars in place to keep it locked, Diana watched with awe as the light tried its best to leak through every crack or seam in the doors.

She had seen such wonders in this age and the last… but she did not know what that could be.

"What will happen to the people outside?" She asked, turning to one of the blind acolytes that barred the door. He did not answer, but instead turned and pointed behind the trio to the sanctuary beyond.

"The doors to the temple will remain locked until the Nexus has passed, Diana." The voice behind her was unfamiliar, and yet somehow… she knew it. Slowly, she turned to face the woman who had the benefit of already knowing they would meet. She held Jim close, even as his head lolled against her shoulder and he shuddered with pain.

"The Nexus?" Diana repeated, momentarily fascinated and confused by the dark-skinned woman in the royal purple chiton and elaborate headscarf. Those were colors associated with the gods, not to be worn lightly.

"Yes. It can be an eternity or the blink of an eye. It all depends on this place." The woman motioned to the sanctuary around them, then to Diana. "It all depends on you. And I was afraid you would be too late."

"Too late?" Diana shook her head, still unable to shake the sensation that she knew this woman somehow. As if in a dream… "You're her. You're the Oracle."

The woman smiled, almost polite to a fault in her amusement. "Yes, I am. But, you can call me Guinan."

 **END OF PART ONE.**

 **TO BE CONTINUED...**


	26. Song for Eurydice, Part 2: Teaser

**Author's Note:** Fun fact for all my Trekkies, both babyTreks and vets! As you may have guessed by the end of this chapter, this is in fact the very same Nexus from the movie Star Trek: Generations. This is my version of that story. I actually extensively researched all the science behind it, so everything should check out (Within a few microns). As others have mentioned, yes, there's lots of Apollo here, because this is also my version of Who Mourns for Adonais, as I couldn't resist turning it on its head. I hope everyone loves it, I'm incredibly flattered by the positive responses and this episode marks the halfway point for the series, so I'm really proud I got this far without exploding from the pressure of my own story! :D

* * *

 **Song for Eurydice, Part 2: Teaser**

Guinan.

The name had meaning far beyond what Diana could understand, even if she could feel the truth in it. She wore the colors of the gods, the symbol of her father, the all-powerful king of the gods.

"Are you…?" Diana began to ask, only to receive another polite smile from the woman and a slow shake of her head from side to side.

"An Olympian like you? No." Guinan stepped closer to them, her eyes as kind and full of love as Hippolyta. "My people do live for as long, though. We're what you call a race of Listeners. We like to observe and experience life and cultures from all around the galaxy."

Spock remained skeptical, much to Diana's chagrin. "And what species do you belong to?"

"You wouldn't have heard of us, Mister Spock." Guinan took the question, however blunt, with an air of amusement. Diana appreciated that enough that it brought a smile to her face, even with the dire circumstances before them. "El-Aurians hail from parts of the galaxy that the Federation won't wade into for quite some time."

"And yet, you have chosen to integrate with a pre-warp culture." Still skeptical.

She smiled. "I'm not here for the Argelians. In part, I am, but I've really been here waiting for you." As she took another step closer to the trio, Diana felt Jim start to straighten in her grasp. "You see, I have the benefit of knowing what it's like to be inside the Nexus. And it's been calling to both of you. It knows when someone gets disjointed, displaced out of time, Mister Kirk."

As Jim slowly pulled away from her so he could stand straight and face Guinan, she tried to ignore how badly she didn't want to let go. After a week of avoidance and anger, it had been a moment of reprieve. One that she had to bid farewell to in the face of the larger crisis. What _else_ would they have to bid farewell to in order to help Jim?

"You know my name." Jim said, sounding more like himself than he had in hours. Was it the temple? Or was it simply a passing moment of clarity that would soon be swept away as Steve reached out, past the time the Fates had seen fit to give him? "Are you the reason I'm here? Do you have this Vision or whatever the Argelians call it?"

Guinan chuckled in amusement, then motioned for them to follow her. As they did so, Jim and Diana each took up positions on either side of the Oracle. Spock kept a modest distance behind them, his tricorder out as he began to scan the temple. Perhaps now that he knew there was another alien species on the planet, he was less concerned with breaking Starfleet's Prime Directive. "The Vision isn't an object or a special ability, Captain."

"Just… call me Jim. Something tells me pulling rank wouldn't help me much here." Diana's lips quirked with amusement as she glanced over at him. Sure enough, Jim was craning his neck to see up to the temple's roof, the ceiling covered in frescos to honor the sun.

"Well, you're right. It wouldn't." Guinan led them across the length of the temple, passing candles on altars along the walls and statues that Diana could see herself restoring alongside her former colleagues in the Louvre. "But, to the original point: The Vision is what the Argelians call the Nexus."

"And what _is_ the Nexus?" Jim asked. The longer they walked, the more Diana could hear Jim's curiosity return. It was bittersweet.

"It's hard to describe, to be honest." She replied before slowing to a halt at what seemed to be the far end of the temple. Before them were another set of large doors that stretched to the roof. Presumably, they also let outside. "It's a feeling. It's timeless. It's… like being inside joy."

Spock took that opportunity to look up from his tricorder, logical to a fault. "That is hardly a scientific descriptor one would attribute to a temporal anomaly."

Diana caught Jim's sardonic look back at his first officer. She had hoped to share the moment of exasperation with him, but he deftly avoided her gaze before he focused on Guinan once more. "Spock's got a point, though. According to everything the Argelians have recorded, this is a temporal anomaly of some kind."

"It is…" Guinan winced a bit as she had to dance around her answer. "And it isn't. The Nexus is…. So much greater than our understanding. The Nexus was created by a being more ancient and omnipotent than even the Olympians, in a time before most life existed. It exists in all times and all places, and when you're inside of it, you can see anything you want." She stepped over to an altar at their right, pulling a goblet and a pitcher of sacramental wine. "Imagine for a moment that this goblet is your life. And this…" She motioned to the pitcher. "Is the sum of your _possible_ experiences in your life. Now, if I pour a small drop into the goblet, then that is a decision you've made. Eventually, we keep pouring until our goblet is full. The wine in the glass is the life you live. I can no more take one singular drop out of the goblet of my choice and drop it back into the pitcher anymore than I could do the reverse." She took a sip of the wine, smiling a bit at what was clearly a pleasant vintage before setting it back down. "But, in the Nexus, it doesn't matter. You could see each drop of wine and you can reorder it. You can pour it however you like. You can locate the specific drops that are from the sour grapes and pull them from your goblet. The Nexus shapes your reality for as long as you remain there. You can see the family you never had. You can take the path in life you never wanted to take." Guinan glanced over, meeting Diana's gaze. "You can save the ones you couldn't."

Too poignantly reminded of her past, the list that she kept and wished to restore, she fought every urge to indulge in that fantasy. Instead, she focused on _what_ Guinan was describing. She swallowed, steadying her voice before she spoke. "It's Elysium. The paradise of the gods; where all great heroes live in eternal bliss."

The smile on Guinan's face was confirmation enough, but she continued. "Yes. And that is where Captain Trevor was fortunate enough to touch eternity before he was called back to this plane."

"Wait a second. Let me see if I understand what you're telling us." Jim held a hand up to pause her so he could process yet another exercise of faith. "You're saying that Steve Trevor was… in the Nexus. I thought he died."

"He did. On the same day that the Nexus came across the galaxy." Diana said, surprised by her own confidence in the connection. "But, Elysium was not time-bound. It was available to all righteous men and women. I, myself, have sent many of my sisters to the Elysian FIelds by our rites." Her voice trembled slightly with the fear that the gods had yet again failed her and her people.

"And they are there, I promise you, Diana." Guinan's tone was warm, comforting. "When we die, the wonders and mysteries of the universe are opened to us. But, Steve Trevor's sacrifice, as unique and as timely as it was, called his essence to the Nexus. And there it would have remained in eternity. But, for some reason that I do not know, the Nexus had other plans for him. He was given another opportunity." She motioned to Jim. "You."

"I'm not him." Jim said, almost too quickly. "I'm not… I'm James T. Kirk. Not Steve Trevor."

"In essence, you _are_ him. But, you're right. You are your own person. No one can take that from you." She replied. Guinan seemed to have a natural way of knowing precisely what to say at all times. Perhaps it was her connection to this Nexus? Or perhaps it was a wisdom DIana simply had not yet learned in her life. "But, unless you comes to terms with the fact that you _are_ Steve, in some way, then it will kill you both."

"With all due respect, I fail to see how this will help the captain. A temporal anomaly such as the Nexus would have already passed over the planet and left." Spock had put his tricorder away, but he was nevertheless still clearly analyzing the situation. "Even if we wish to help Jim 'come to terms' with the situation, your tool for doing so has already come and gone."

"I think you do see the logic in what I'm saying to you, Mister Spock." Guinan smirked. "After all, you're the one who suggested that your friend was in possession of two _katras_. I knew that you would believe that as much as I knew the three of you would be here."

"Why?" Jim furrowed his brow. "Because you're telepathic?"

"No." Guinan turned to the acolytes behind her, then motioned to the large doors. The acolytes opened the doors that Diana expected to lead back outside. Instead, light spilled into the dark haze of the sanctuary from a swirling orange wave just outside the door. In the center, she could barely see a figure entirely bathed in that light before she had to shield her eyes. "Because he orchestrated all of this."

The doors began to close, just enough that the group could now see the figure standing before them. "The eons have passed and what has been written has come about. You are most welcome, my beloved children. Your places await you."

Diana instantly knew the voice. She dropped her hand from her eyes, in awe that the god she had sought was now before her. "Phoebus Apollo…" She breathed, smiling.

The god in all his splendor, white chiton draped around him and a golden laurel atop sun-kissed, tight curls, smiled broadly back at her. "It is good to see you, Sister."

For the first time since she had left Themyscira and her unanswered prayers upon an alien planet, Diana was no longer alone. The gods had returned. They could save him, they could help guide her.

As Diana turned to glance at an uncharacteristically speechless Jim Kirk, the reality of the situation washed away any relief she may have felt.

Apollo had arrived. But, what terrible price would the gods require?


	27. Song for Eurydice, Part 2: Act I

**Song for Eurydice, Part 2: Act I**

Since walking into the temple, Jim's head had felt clearer than it had been since he'd first met Diana. Everything seemed to come into focus when he'd met Guinan, and even the memories that he _knew_ weren't his own somehow seemed bearable. For the moment.

Spock had been right about one thing. Jim frequently achieved that which was deemed impossible. Maybe it had contributed to his ego over the years, but for the most part, Jim was sure it was a matter of being in the right place at the right time.

But, he knew one thing for sure. It truly was _impossible_ to see the man in front of him, claiming to be Apollo. Because, he looked just like…

"Dad?" The word was out of Jim's mouth before he could stop it, disbelieving and somehow hopeful all at once. He'd never seen his father. Not really. He'd seen photos from ship logs, the occasional video log. And yet, here he was. In his uniform on the _Kelvin_ , standing before all of them with a broad smile on his face. "You're… that's impossible."

When the man spoke, it was his father's voice. Jim could feel a surge of emotion deep within, where he kept that grief of a loss as old as his life itself. "No, James Kirk. I am not your father. I am Phoebus Apollon, Apollon Delphinios, the god of light, the god of truth. I am a friend of mankind, and I am here to save you from that which ails you."

Jim's grief was replaced with the hot coal of anger reserved for people who had duped him. He could think of several ways that Apollo was pulling that off, and he appreciated none of them. "I don't know how long it's been since you were on earth, but we don't like it when people mess around in our heads. If you're not my father - "

"Jim, what are you talking about?" Diana's voice gave him pause. For the first time in days, her voice gave him a sense of calm instead of a longing ache or a torrent of thoughts and emotions he couldn't possibly compartmentalize all at once. He turned to look over at her, then realized she seemed utterly perplexed. "That is Apollo. He looks nothing like the picture of your father on the probe reports."

Jim pointed to the figure in front of them, careful not to look at him anymore than necessary. "Diana, that man clearly looks like my dad. And I'd appreciate it if he'd knock it off."

Before she could insist that Jim was somehow seeing things, he was relieved to hear Spock come to his rescue behind him. "As I mentioned, Ambassador Prince, influence of non-telepathic species is a violation of Federation law. And as I, too, am seeing a man who resembles the late George Kirk, I must ask you: Whom is it that you see before you?"

Without hesitation, she simply stated. "I see Apollo." Then, when Jim motioned for her to give a little more information, she continued on. "I see a man whose face is that of the statue we both saw in the Argelian report, Commander Spock. A white chiton, he has very curly blonde hair. I have known him and seen him in the past. This is not George Kirk."

"Indeed." Spock turned his full attention back to Jim. Times like this, Jim valued his friend's company all the more. He was steady as a rock, and right now, that was what he needed to hear. "Then, I believe we are seeing what Apollo _wishes_ for us to see. You view him as the Olympian you have always known. And to us, he is George Kirk."

"But, of course." The god replied, making Jim grit his teeth. What should have been a comforting voice was only grating on his nerves. "I have held many forms over the eons. I am a god of light. I am too powerful for any one man to comprehend."

Diana crossed her arms over her chest, annoyed. For a moment, she had forgotten - or stopped caring - that she had planned on nothing but reverence for the man. "You are an Olympian just as I am, a son of Zeus. Your true form is no less difficult to understand than mine."

"I don't speak of body, I speak of the mind, Diana. This is why I ensured that the probe would reach the man called George Kirk. I could sense that his child would be of great importance to the Nexus." Apollo - Jim was very careful to keep making that distinction - strode forward, closing the distance between them. Jim squared off, not particularly keen on backing down or showing that same deference that Diana had wanted to. He had a clear head, he was going to use it. "I'm afraid that if you wish to see this through, you have only two options. And both of them require me."

Jim considered that for a moment. It would have been easy to assume he didn't need Apollo's help. But, he'd gotten this far, and he knew he was running out of time. The dried rust on his face wasn't from a brawl between a couple of cadets. It was from a brawl between two minds, and he didn't know how much longer he could keep fighting. So, instead, he nodded and entertained the notion. Why not? He was never known for closing his mind to any theory, no matter how far-fetched. "What is it that you'll help me with?"

Apollo glanced over at Diana, grinning. Jim felt his stomach turn, sickened by all of the ghosts he'd seen over the last week. "He's a smart one, I see why you like him. Takes remarkable curiosity to believe in a god, even as he stands before him."

"I didn't say I believed in you." Jim said, calling his attention back to him. For a moment, he saw something flicker across the odd shadow of his father's face, and he got the same kind of kick out of that as he did riling up cadets in his academy days. "I'm afraid humanity doesn't have much need for gods these days. We're a fairly skeptical lot."

The god leaned closer, scowling. "I know far better than you do, Kirk." George Kirk's eyes raked over his son, but they held an edge to them that betrayed they were a mask, not the real thing. "But, you're not as skeptical as you pretend to be. There's at least one god you believe in. And she's more appreciative of it than you think."

Jim bristled, not sure why the implication got under his skin the way it did. Or maybe it wasn't that. Maybe it was the fact that his brother was talking about her like she was a prize, and not just as formidable as him. "Maybe I don't appreciate gods who start playing around with a culture's evolution. Two hundred years ago, the Argelians didn't speak Themysciran. When you got here, that changed."

"To save their lives, Captain." Apollo replied with a dark edge to his voice. "Before I arrived, they would have destroyed themselves. I unified them, provided them bountiful crops and helped cleanse their oceans so that they would no longer die of starvation." He motioned to Guinan. "And Guinan already knew that I would come. She was waiting to help me protect these people. It's a bit late to chastise me for that." The way he chuckled sounded a little too much like Jim's father. "You weren't born yet."

Jim took a deep breath, trying to focus on what he _could_ change for the moment. "You said there were two options. I'd like to hear them and how you're involved."

When Jim received no immediate answer, Diana chimed in as well. "Brother. Please. We came all this way. _He_ came all this way. On faith. On prophecy. And I assume you brought him here because you are still a friend to mankind, not to play games with him." It took everything in him not to look over at her from the way she pled on his behalf. He'd spent the last week not knowing if anything he felt for her was real, but right now, it didn't matter. She was there and she didn't have to be.

Apollo finally relented. The scowl left his face immediately, replaced by another one of his father's all-too-familiar smiles. "Yes. Of course I have. Because, I believe in this gift that you have been given, James. Even if you do not."

"I have a past life interfering with my current one," He said. "So far, all it's been is a death sentence."

"In your current state, yes." Apollo turned to pace, hands behind his back. If George Kirk had paced, Jim imagined it would have looked something like that. "But, that is because your human mind cannot comprehend that which is timeless. You require the mind of one who has lived many lives, has spanned the eons, to help you. I knew that Diana would be prepared for the task, but as she has never seen the Elysian Fields, she would also be tempted by the fruits of the Underworld." He turned to face them again, motioning to his attire. "It's why I chose this form. Once you enter Elysium, it will try to keep you there. The fruits of the garden are the sweetest, but they bind you to the place. If tempted by your happy fantasies, you may not know how to leave. And even I could not truly force you to leave. But, I have at least traversed its hills. I will help you travel the Nexus so that you can find the answer you are looking for. You want to know if you have ever been master of your own actions."

Jim blinked, momentarily thrown. Of course, he knew that Apollo was clearly utilizing some sort of telepathic field to know what his dad looked like, but… Jim hadn't really spoken to his concerns to anyone other than Spock. Hearing it from Apollo seemed to awaken the beast that was his curiosity. If this Nexus could help him understand how much of him was Steve and how much of him was Jim Kirk, then he had to try.

"Are you suggesting that Captain Kirk enter the Nexus?" Spock, however, was less than enthusiastic. "There is no empirical data to suggest that a singular human could survive walking directly into a temporal anomaly."

Guinan spoke for the first time since Apollo had arrived, simply motioning to the doors behind her and the glowing light within. "The doors will provide safe passage into the anomaly, Mister Spock. I can assure you, it's possible to enter it this way."

"It is also possible to enter a burning building. The chances of leaving said building are not the same." Spock replied, testy in his own Vulcan way.

Jim quickly turned to look at him, "Come on, Spock, it's not like I have any better options."

"Perhaps not, but I fail to see the logic in taking unnecessary risks."

Rolling his eyes, Jim turned back to Apollo. In perfect Jim Kirk fashion, he had decided that the risks were worth taking the moment he had been promised answers. Now, it was an away mission where he was back to being the captain, not the victim. "So, let's say I go in?"

"The choices are simple. You may take the simple path: returning Steve Trevor to the Nexus. You give up all knowledge of his life and in doing so, you will never learn why he wished to leave in the first place." Apollo's pointed glance at the Amazon to Jim's right gave him a good idea, though. "The more difficult path would see to fruition that which the gods set in motion for the mortal known as Steve Trevor. Great reward comes, but at great risk."

The phrase rang eerily. For just a moment, Hippolyta's voice filled his mind. _You can never see where that road will take you if you don't take the journey. Great reward comes to one who can be called Champion. But, there is great risk._

That was why they had led him here. That was the path he was meant to take. "What's the risk?" Jim wasn't too sure he wanted to know, as it wouldn't have stopped him anyway. But, again, his curiosity got the better of him.

"The journey may not be one you can survive." That was Guinan again. He was starting to understand why her people were called a race of listeners. She seemed to know precisely when to speak. "You'll need an anchor, something to keep you here. And even then, the strain could prove too much."

"What kind of anchor?" Diana stepped forward. "I can go in with him if that will protect him - "

"It's not a matter of protection, my sister." Apollo gently waved off her suggestion. "As Mister Spock pointed out, I am no stranger to telepathic communication. All of the gods have heard prayers over the centuries. But, the two minds need to walk together into the Nexus, and an anchor must telepathically keep them grounded here."

"Then I believe I have the solution _._ " Spock exchanged a glance with Jim. He could see that through his friend's logical exterior, there was worry beneath those eyes. "I suggest the rite of _fal-tor-pan._ " They'd discussed the mind meld, but maybe Spock had never thought it would be truly necessary. "The mind meld can transfer the _katra_ to a worthy vessel."

"Ah, yes. With your ritual, you would be able to lead Steve Trevor and Jim with me through to the Nexus. It would still be dangerous for mortals as yourselves, but achievable." Even though Apollo didn't speak anything like his father, Jim had to admit it actually helped to hear it from his voice. It was a false calm, but it made him feel like his father had led him here in a way.

But, to lead him here, or Diana here, was one thing. But, Spock… Jim turned back to him. "Spock, I can't ask you to do that - "

"Then as both captain and my friend, be satisfied that you are not asking me. I am volunteering myself, Jim." Spock had stepped closer, as if daring him to tell him no. "Your chances of success without me are not promising."

 _Unbelievable._ Opening his mouth to think of a comeback, Jim realized that, unfortunately, he didn't have one that would even remotely get under his skin. Instead, he sighed and shook his head. "I guess that settles it. We go into the Nexus and I figure out how to deal with all of…" He tapped his temple with a finger. "This."

"Very well. Then, we shall open the doors - " Apollo turned and motioned to the sightless acolytes. That was really starting to grow unsettling.

"And what am I going to do? Wait for all of you men to come out of Elysium?" Diana was addressing the room, but from the way her gaze lingered on his, Jim knew exactly who she was trying to reach.

"Actually, I would prefer it if you would remain with me in the temple, Diana." Guinan's timing was uncanny. She made her way over to the other woman, resting a hand on her arm as she spoke in a way that comforted everyone. "You see, the temple itself is also a physical anchor to the Nexus. The early Argelians built the sanctuary with the right materials and in such a way that it will hold the Nexus here for a few hours. But, should anything happen while they are inside, if the temple is destroyed or destabilized, they could be lost to the Nexus until it returns to the galaxy in 38 years."

"I cannot stand here and do nothing." Diana lamented, looking from the oracle to her brother as if hoping for answers. Jim could understand. It wasn't like her to let people walk into danger knowingly. Which was why it had been so hard for Steve to leave her…

"Diana, can I talk to you for a second?" Jim made the decision before he'd even really thought about why. He walked over and gently took Diana by the elbow, steering them away from the group.

No sooner than they were out of immediate earshot, he dropped his grip on her and she turned to face him. "I told you I would do it. Whatever it is - "

"I know you would. I get that." Jim could feel the eerie sense again that he was reliving a moment from his - Steve's life, but this time, it felt distant. Easier to talk around. "Look, I get it. You are a hero, we've talked about how neither of us considers the risks in the moment, we just take the leap. And that's what I'm going to do." He could see her preparing a rebuttal and smoothly leaned closer, resting his hands gently on her shoulders. "Diana, if you want to fix the trust between us, then trust that the last thing I want is for you to go into that place and see ghosts that don't want to let you go."

She frowned, confused for just a moment before she understood. "My mother. Bruce, all of the League, the Amazons I've left behind, they would all be there."

"Exactly, and I don't want to put you in the position of having to choose between them or me. Whatever the choice you make, I would respect it, but it doesn't leave a lot of room for second chances." He forced a smile, sad as it was, hoping that it would at least allay her concerns. "I need to do this for me. You can't save me from myself, Diana, even if that guy is Steve Trevor."

He wasn't sure what he expected. Maybe a begrudging yes. Maybe an annoyed shrug and a stern look before he left. He didn't expect her to reach out and gently run her hand along his cheek. Her eyes wandered his face, as if drinking it in, before she finally rested her hand on his shoulder and squeezed gently. "Thank you."

Dumbly, Jim muttered. "For what?"

"For still trusting me." She inhaled, then whispered. "And I will trust you. To fight your own battles."

It was settled, then. The last of his anger faded, and in the clarity he knew would probably be gone the moment he walked through those doors, he reached up and brushed hair out of her eyes, fingers gently brushing the star on her diadem. "You really are an angel," He smiled, watching the way her cheeks colored a bit from the sudden affection. "And when we get back to the _Enterprise_ , I'm giving you even better quarters to make up for asking you to leave in the first place."

The fact that it took Diana a few moments to reply was far more of a boost to his ego than he needed. "Y-You don't need to do that - "

"I absolutely do. Captain's orders." With her so close, still ready to do whatever was necessary to protect him and his crew, Jim knew they'd be all right. If he could just come back from whatever trials the Nexus would throw him into. And if he didn't… at least he got to see her. Maybe it wasn't just Steve Trevor's memories. He wasn't in his head right now, and he wanted to tell her how badly she'd woken her way into his heart. _"_ He really loves you… _"_ Jim said. _Oh, hell, Jim, he's not the only one._

Taking a deep breath, slipping from her grip and settling back into his role as Captain, he nodded and began to backpedal towards the group again. "Your Majesty…"

Pivoting back on his heel, he faced the group and made his way over to Spock, clapping his friend on the back. Spock glanced over at him, sufficiently perturbed for Jim's liking. "Jim, this will not be 'fun.'"

"Sure it will, Spock." He sighed. "Be optimistic. I'm just going to run through my mind like searching personal logs. It'll be great."

The Vulcan didn't agree, or at least didn't bother to say anything. Instead, he turned to the now open doors where the Nexus swirled as a terrible storm. "The ritual is typically performed with individuals who are stationary, but I believe I can begin the connection here just before entry."

"Very well." Apollo said.

The three men moved to the doorway. Jim could feel his heart rate spike, but he also knew the feeling of a good thrill. He was ready. This was an adventure. And Jim Kirk never thought too hard about why he was on an adventure. The journey was always as good as the destination. Taking a deep breath as he surveyed the temporal anomaly, Jim finally turned to face Spock. He couldn't have asked for a better companion for this. "All right. Time to sort this out once and for all."

Standing between Apollo and Jim, Spock first reached out and pressed his fingers gently to Jim's face. Ambassador Spock had done the same many years ago now, but the immediate shock of feeling someone touching his mind telepathically was impossible to miss.

On Spock's other side, he did the same to Apollo.

The moment Spock's mind touched Apollo's, Jim suddenly felt like he really knew nothing.

 _Jim, I must urge you to remain focused on my thoughts._ Spock's voice seemed to drive home like a pick into a rock wall. _I will now attempt to focus the neural pattern of Steve Trevor into the mind of Apollo._

Jim paused, could hear himself breathing. He knew that to Guinan and Diana, it probably looked like nothing was happening. But, he could _feel_ so much.

He could feel Apollo. He could feel the way he thought of humans, of how he was elated by the the belief and worship. How he craved that, how the Argelians had given him that.

Jim had wandered too far. He could feel Spock pulling him back.

And then they stepped forward into the Nexus, just past the doors.

Jim wasn't sure if he heard the doors close behind him… or mortar fire.

* * *

Diana's fingertips still burned from where they had touched his skin, even after the doors to the Nexus had closed. As much as it ached for her to see them walk through that threshold into certain danger, her heart ached more knowing that she could not help Jim face his past. Their past. But, she knew he had been right. While she could have certainly gone into the Nexus, unafraid of the trials, she did not know if she could have pulled herself from the throes of her loved ones, long gone.

She had heard tales of the Elysian Fields. Heroes wanted for nothing, and enjoyed bliss of all that they had in life and more. Would Diana have been able to say goodbye to Antiope, when she had so much she wanted to tell her? Or her mother? If she had seen Steve in the fields, would she had been able to go back to this new world, full of terrors and wonders alike, or bask forever in the eternal bliss of snow-dusted nights and simple pleasures?

"It's better that you don't think about what's beyond those doors." Guinan said beside her, also watching the doorway.

Diana smiled, ignoring the tinge of embarrassment that the woman had clearly read her so well. She tore her gaze away from them and turned instead to face the Oracle. "It does seem very easy to get lost."

"And the older you get, the longer the list of people you want to visit gets." Guinan motioned for Diana to follow her again. "You'd be surprised how many times I've had to tell people that."

The two of them sat on a stone bench, a comforting reminder of her own home and the beautiful craftsmanship of her sisters. In this setting, it felt easy to trust Guinan, as if the woman had always been part of the Amazons. _Perhaps that is a blessing_ … _I have questions, and we have nothing but time…_

"I'm no stranger to loss," Diana said, then realized that might seem callous or dismissive. "In the moments after I met Steve, I lost my aunt and mentor. I lost him only days later. And I've had time to put those losses to bed. But, I do worry that had I gone into Elysium… Jim was right. I would have been tempted to stay, to see my mother and to see Steve again, as I remembered him. But, I never would have forgiven myself. Because to revisit the ghosts of my past, of the losses I have already come to accept… would mean letting go of Jim."

"Are you worried about letting him down, or are you worried for his safety?"

Diana considered Guinan's poignant question. She had not asked what Diana knew she wanted - or needed to say. "In truth, both." She breathed, surprised by the sudden onslaught of emotion that closed her throat. Not for the first time, Diana had to suppress the sudden, heart clenching fear that the _Enterprise_ would be without their captain. And that she would be without him, having been too afraid to love a man who seemed to be everything she needed now. "This is my doing. I led Circe to him."

"Oh, Diana, that's not what happened." Guinan's hand on hers was warm, but the words didn't really make sense with what she knew.

"Of course it is. I was there."

"Those are the events as they occurred, yes, but those were set in motion by greater powers. It's in Jim's destiny to come to this point. And I know that because _you're_ here." She suggested a greater power at work… A tapestry woven by others.

"The gods did this?" She asked, turning to the other woman.

"Yes, but not because they're cruel or capricious. But, because they wanted to honor you. And Jim is about to find out why." Guinan said it so simply, it seemed common sense. Yet, Diana didn't want to consider what the gods would do as a way to honor her. Gifts never came without a reason. "You wondered why he looked like Steve. Why you were drawn to him. You knew it wasn't coincidence, but… you're so giving, so selfless… I know you think you don't deserve special treatment, but sometimes you do. Diana, you can't recognize a gift when you see it."

"How is this a gift?" Diana scoffed at the notion, but then realized that Guinan had no reason to lie. She earnestly believed that this was somehow a gift. Diana didn't know if she was insulted or… scared. Scared of false hope, of what she would say or do, of… betraying Steve. "To torture me with Steve's face, with memories of the time that we _lost_ \- "

"But, you have that time now." Guinan urged. In her eyes, Diana could see the determination of a woman who clearly felt that Diana was missing part of the greater tapestry. "Jim Kirk is everything Steve Trevor could have been if he hadn't been lost to one of the most senseless wars in Earth's history."

"But, he is clearly his own person. Which means, they ask me to bury Steve's memory all over again." Diana stood, pacing as she tried to make sense of how the gods could do such a thing, ask such a price.

With a poise indicative of her position as oracle, Guinan also rose from the bench. She carefully strode closer, forcing Diana to stop in her pacing. "Diana, _no._ No one wants you or says that you have to give Steve up. Think of all the people you loved before and after him. Not romantically, but in a filial, platonic sense. When you lost friends, did you forget about them? Did you simply replace them?"

Etta and her bubbly smile immediately came to mind, from their first meeting to her last days. Diana felt the old grief well up, then swallowed it back down. No one would ever be Etta Candy. "Of course I didn't replace them."

"Exactly. Because the heart is limitless, Diana. When we lose someone, we don't purge the heart of their influence. And no one is asking for you to do that here, least of all Steve. He wants you to move forward with whoever that is for you. I don't know exactly what he asked for, but he knew it would lead Jim to you. And I believe that means he wanted you to give you something few people have: a true second chance, a blank slate. For both of you. If that's what you want." The notion that Steve would somehow move heaven and earth to find some way to guarantee her happiness… it sounded so much like him. "When Jim comes out of the Nexus, he might not have any memories or knowledge of Steve. If you take Steve completely out of the equation… how would you feel? Assume Steve is happy, no matter the outcome. That you're not insulting his memory, you're fulfilling his wishes for you."

She knew the answer. They both did. "I would be relieved beyond measure to have him back."

"Why is that? And be honest. If not for me, for yourself. You've been holding it in so long."

Diana knew she was right. It seemed…. So silly to hide now. It was hardly behavior worthy of an Amazon. Yet, her own mother had thought that guarding her heart would protect her daughter. Perhaps, it was the pitfall all queens fell into. But, she valued the truth. It was her calling. Almost idly, Diana's hand drifted to her side until she found her lasso. If she was going to be beholden to the truth, then let it be by the judgement of the gods. She wound the lasso gently around her hands, then looked up at Guinan, taking a deep breath.

"Because I love him." The truth spilled from her lips. "He is everything I loved in Steve. He has his courage, his desire to protect others, a great compassion. But, he is also so much more. He hasn't been broken by war, he hasn't let his trials, his defeats and his demons define him and break him. And I feel as if he is who Steve could have been in this time of wonder and opportunity, and that makes me want to protect him and his world even more. Because, I cannot lose him again and I have not been so shaken and frightened to lose someone in such a long time." When the words finally ceased, her hands shook and she found herself on the verge of tears. She couldn't say when those feelings had finally taken root, but they had followed her nonetheless.

"I think you have your answer." Guinan finally said. "And _that_ is why you should stop torturing yourself. The Nexus has no ill will. If the Borg are the Anti-Life equation, then the Nexus is Life itself. Have faith in the Olympians. Be gracious. Let your heart build another compartment. Don't deny yourself happiness. You have more than enough room to love everyone."

Diana slowly unwound the lasso from her hands, then coiled and placed it back on her belt. Guinan had been right. The truth had been waiting to be voiced, and in doing so, the dread and guilt she had been carrying began to lift. But, confessing to Guinan was one thing. Telling Jim… and hoping he would understand….

"You know of the Borg?" Diana asked, changing the subject so that she could have something more objective to ponder.

"Yes. In fact, that was how I experienced the Nexus the first time. There's a…" She shifted in her seat. "A version of me. From another timeline. We were running from a small Borg sphere. Our ship accidentally got caught in the Nexus's ribbon. I would have stayed. But, the ship I was travelling on didn't remain in its grasp long enough." Guinan glanced back at the doors. "But... part of me is still in there, and waits for when I finally leave this world." After a moment, she motioned for Diana to take a seat once more on the bench.

"Spock said that it was made of temporal energy." Diana said as she sat, running those same fingers that had touched Jim's cheek over the straps of her bracer to keep herself calm and grounded. She didn't know if she could keep talking about Jim, about her heart and how difficult it had been to move forward. "I had a friend, a hero who was called The Flash. He, too, could travel through time. He told me that to do that, he had to harness what he called the Speed Force. And that it was terrible and yet gave him more power than he thought possible." She sighed and looked over to Guinan, allowing the truth of the matter to settle in her stomach. "But, for all of that, he said it felt like home. As if he was on the cusp of paradise. It was the Nexus he touched, wasn't it?"

Guinan nodded, the same placid smile on her face suggesting that she wasn't at all surprised by Diana's questions. "Yes. And it's had many names to many cultures and peoples, but in the end, it exists in all times and places. Because part of me is still in the Nexus, I have… these feelings of what could happen. It's how I knew Jim Kirk without ever having met him. I've met the captain of an _Enterprise_ , or at least, some version of me has. I even know that one day, Klingons will be as welcome on the _Enterprise_ as Vulcans and Orions are. It's how I knew you were on your way. I imagine that someone like The Flash gleaned his ability because part of him is still there."

Diana didn't reply, but given how she knew Barry had received his gifts, it seemed all too obvious now. Barry had been dead according to medical professionals for moments before miraculously recovering. Perhaps in that time, he had touched the Nexus. She chuckled a little at the notion that the Speed Force had followed Barry home like a stray dog.

"I remember him, actually." Guinan's admission caught her by surprise. "The red suit, he was always incredibly personable to the people he saved." At Diana's stunned expression, she continued on. "Earth has been one of my favorite places to visit. I've been there several times, although not since the Eugenics War. I was in Paris when you killed Medusa. Personally, I preferred San Francisco around the turn of the 20th century. I gave Samuel Clemens a run for his money."

Diana shook her head, impressed and a bit disbelieving. "Amazing. Why haven't you come back, then? Why are you here?"

For the first time since they had met, Guinan's smile, kind and warm as it was, slipped off of her features. Instead, Diana could see fear, grief… loss. "My homeworld was… " She took a deep breath before confessing to Diana. "Assimilated. I'm sure you understand that term." Before Diana could offer condolences or her honest surprise, Guinan continued on. "My home is far across the galaxy, in the Delta quadrant. The Borg assimilated them about a hundred years ago."

"But... " Diana was at a loss. They had been so sure they had eliminated Darkseid. And when they had found Vanessa, she had desperately hoped it had been serendipity. "If they are out there, consuming worlds, then I must stop them. This is Darkseid's legacy and it was our duty to remove the stain he placed on this galaxy."

Guinan stared at her for a long moment, searching her face for some unknown reason. After some consideration, she exhaled, as if the weight of the world were on the woman's shoulders. And to some extent, that was true. Diana could sense that clearly. Whether it was from having seen Apollo, the sibling god who had agreed that she would be a goddess of truth, or from her gradual re-awakening into this new age, she didn't know. She only knew that Guinan felt profound responsibility to this place, to her knowledge of the galaxy and infinite timelines.

"Diana, you cannot solve every problem today. And I can't tell you that you're going to solve the problem of the Borg tomorrow. When you see as much as I do, it's impossible to tell which timeline is going to be the one that comes to fruition. I didn't tell you about my homeworld so that you could start on some crusade against the Borg. I told you so that you understand that if you plan to be the champion of this new era, you will need to understand the greater forces at work around you." Guinan laced her fingers together and rested her hands in her lap. "In fact, you have more to fear from the Romulans than you do the Borg. I knew it was a possibility, but the likelihood has gone from one of my _feelings_ to an absolute."

"What do you mean? I haven't seen Romulans since Jim brought me to the _Enterprise_." Diana recalled the centurions still held in custody on Themyscira. For a moment, she wondered what Kal had done in her absence. Had he imprisoned them? One of them had fallen on his own blade rather than be taken into custody. Were they even alive?

"Diana, you're a goddess. Your understanding of the world around is far greater than you let on, and more than you like to expand your senses." Guinan looked up at the roof, as if she could see past the frescoes and to the sky beyond. "When you were a child and you faced the sun, what were you looking for?"

Diana slowly stood, looking up at the ceiling. "I was seeking clarity…" She muttered, aware that something was pulling her focus away from the temple around them and… beyond. Above… Closing her eyes, Diana's senses opened as she sought the truth in her surroundings. Now that she had faced the truth about Jim, about her heart, she could open her heart and her mind to more.

She felt the Argelians as they worshipped, enthralled and praying for Apollo's blessing. She stretched further, expecting to feel the crew of the _Enterprise_. Instead, she felt something… darker…

She felt…

"Ares…" She breathed. She knew the taste of that particular god's drug. Someone's hand was moving, but it wasn't directly from the god of war. They were fueling his machinations somewhere in the galaxy, to be sure, but there was always war somewhere. This was not him.

This was personal. Diana felt the heat of vendetta as it assaulted her senses.

She snapped her eyes open as she recognized the sensation. "Romulans. A warbird. They're here, but why?"

Before answers could come, there was a sudden rush of sound outside the temple. Then, half the roof came down over their heads.

Without thinking, Diana sped with the fury of the gods. Drawing her shield, she took hold of Guinan around the waist and cleared her to safety as debris and columns fell. She covered the other woman's body with her own, shield held aloft until the torrent finally ended.

As the dust barely settled, Diana stood straight and rushed to lift the fallen columns. To her sorrow, two of the acolytes had not been fast enough. Nevertheless, she pulled them free, cradling each gently before setting them down before Guinan. "Why would they attack the temple?" Diana asked, stricken.

"They're under orders." Guinan _knew_ that it was a possibility. That this was the timeline she had seen. "The Romulans are here for you, Diana."

Diana craned her neck again, looking up at the hole in the roof. The sky beyond was in strange shades of red and cold from the Nexus, anchored on the far doors. She couldn't see the Romulan ship, but she knew it had to be there.

"If they hit the temple again, we could lose them. Jim and Spock will be lost to us for the next 38 years."

The thought chilled her. Yet, it set her resolve. The smirk, a promise to rise to the challenge of her enemies, crossed Diana's features as her shield slipped from her fingers to the ground. "We'll see about that."

Focusing her strength, Diana crouched down to ground herself for the moment. "If they want me, let's see if they can handle me."

With the force to equal Kal's, Diana shot from the ground, soaring through the gap in the roof and up to the sky beyond.

She heard the startled cries of worshippers, but her eyes remained focused above. Soaring ever higher, she could finally spot the vessel in the sky: a small grey toy compared to the real thing.

A green dot flickered, then grew larger.

 _Disruptor beam…_ she realized. It was headed for the temple, for her.

But, it would not succeed.

Diana's diadem began to glow as she flew closer, then came to a halt mid-air. "I am Diana, daughter of Hippolyta. I am Queen of the Amazons and Champion of Themyscira!" She shouted to the wind, willing them to defy her from afar. "I hereby uphold the duty of the Amazons and will protect those that call to my brother! I deny your claim upon this world and those guarded by Apollo! _You shall not harm them!_ "

The beam reached her, several meters across. Diana crossed her arms, summoning the same divine power she first used against Ares so long ago. She screamed in righteous fury as she - both in body and with the divine halo of energy around her - connected with the disruptor beam, letting it blow her back several meters before she halted its progress.

She loved. It was her great truth. It freed her and it would wrap around this planet as the great cloak of her mother had done. They could come to destroy, but, they would pummel against The Goddess of Truth in all her splendor.

Shimmering in white light, Diana's power flowed through her in golden force that dispersed the beam with nowhere else to go. As the disruptor beam came to its natural conclusion, Diana summoned that great power within and threw the energy back as her bracelets separated.

Lightning of the gods soared back out to the ship, coupled with residual disruptor fire. From here, Diana couldn't see the damage as more than a pinprick of fire, but she knew she had struck home.

Galvanized, Diana prepared for another strike.

She would destroy the ship by herself, if necessary. No one else would die today.

That was the Truth.

And once Diana knew the Truth, it was Absolute.


	28. Song for Eurydice, Part 2: Act II

**Song for Eurydice, Part 2: Act II**

He'd have to work on speeding up the bloody turbolifts. The damn things were already pretty fast, but certainly not fast enough to keep up with Montgomery Scott, that was for bloody sure. Not for the first time, he'd wished for Pavel back to help him work through the impossible amount of problems he was expected to solve in absolutely no time.

In that respect, Mister Sulu was just as bad as Jim. If Scotty needed two hours, he got two minutes. While his team had managed to seal the hull breaches on the lower decks, he'd be stuck mulling over the utter impossibility that an old D7 warbird had somehow fired straight through the shields. D7 class ships were as old as his wee granny and this one had somehow run rings 'round his girl!

But, he'd managed to figure out what had happened, or at least had about as good an idea as he would get in so little time. Just as well, because the lift doors had opened and the briefing room was waiting for him, along with the skeleton crew that was the senior staff.

As he came through the door, Sulu and Bones were already waiting, along with Lieutenant Uhura. The lass couldn't seem to stop pacing, though. That wasn't good.

"Am I late?" Scotty asked. "I mean, to be fair, there's only four of us now, and I've had me hands full patchin' the _Enterprise_ up so I might have missed a beep or two."

"You're fine, Mister Scott. Have a seat." Sulu said, motioning for everyone to take a seat - including Uhura. "I think we all would like to know how that warbird attacked through our shields."

"Oh, aye, I'm sure." Scotty took a seat, already preparing to answer the question of the hour. "I ran through all the sensors readings from the moment we entered the Argelian system to see if I could figure out how that warbird got the jump on us. Used to be that cloaked vessels coming out of warp left a huge burst of tachyons, but whatever hole that was, those bastards plugged it."

"So that explains why we didn't know they were here until they were right on top of us." Uhura said, even though she still seemed so nervous she might jump right back up to pace again. "But, what about the weapons?"

"Ahh, that's where it gets real interestin'." Scotty said, leaning forward in the chair. "I dinnae how they did it, but just before the warbird powered weapons, while we had an open hail, they sent a signal to the ship through our comm channel. It sent back our specific shield and phase frequencies to the warbird and reprogrammed their systems so that they could slip right through the shields." He was almost impressed. _Almost_. The bastards had hurt his lady, and that could never stand.

"Well, how the hell did they do that?" Bones groused, the alarm plain on his face.

"They had our command codes. I mean, alone, it's… well, a nod's as good as a wink tae a blind horse." Scotty rattled off the parlance without hesitation, then caught the somewhat lost look on Sulu's face. Och, it wasn't the same without Jim around. At least when it came to their ship, he seemed to speak Scotty's language. "Without a ship or an idea of what to do with 'em, Federation Command codes are relatively useless. But, the moment ye know the system ye want to access, it's a bloody skeleton key." He shifted in his seat a bit. "I've locked 'em out, changed the command codes, but that's just a temporary fix. We'll need to report this back to Starfleet, make sure they plug the leak."

"So, how did they get it?" Sulu, as the acting captain, was all business. Scotty wouldn't get a chance to really talk up how difficult it had been to figure any of that out.

Resigned to his fate, Scotty shrugged. "Someone had to give it to them. These were command codes specific to the _Enterprise_. I suggest when we disable that ship, we ask them personally." He motioned to Uhura. "Well, I suppose you'd be the one to ask them. Any idea who they are? I didn't check the comms audio, but didn't seem like they transmitted much."

The comms officer frowned, running her finger along her lip thoughtfully. "No. They didn't say anything. It was an open comm, though, so…" A light practically went off over her head and she looked to Sulu. "I bet I can find something if I review the audio. If they sent the command codes, through, then there's a chance I can find some ambient noise."

Sulu nodded. "Great. Let's see what you can find."

As Uhura started to rise, Scotty scoffed, a bit confused and put out. "Now hang on a minute. Doesn't anyone want to know if the bleedin' ship's gonna be all right?"

"As one healer to another," Bones drawled. Scotty wasn't sure if he was being indulged or not. "How's your patient?"

As the resident miracle worker on this ship, Scotty felt like he was entitled to a few moments to talk himself up. "Oh, she'll be fine. Purrin' like a kitten." He puffed up a bit, proud of his team's work. "Course, she'll need a real refit back at the _Yorktown_ , so sooner we're done with the captain's bloody errand, the better."

Scotty was used to getting a bit more of a chuckle from something like that. After all, he loved being on away missions as much as Jim - if it meant good drink and good women. Given that the captain was on the planet with Ambassador Prince, he'd half-expected it to not really be much of an away mission at all. With all his time in Engineering, he'd barely seen Jim in the last week. And when he did, the captain didn't seem too keen to talk about the ambassador. Normally, that was a sign he was trying - and failing - to pursue a lass.

So, the oddly conspiratorial and guilty look Bones and Uhura exchanged dinnae sit well with him at all. Especially since Sulu seemed just as distracted by it, too. "What? Look, I've been down in Engineerin' workin' all day, but last time I checked, wasn't this some sort of archaeological observation? We dinnae even know if that warbird was Romulan or Klingon, and the cap'n's busy making friendly with the natives. I'm just sayin' we should probably pull him back soon as we can."

After a moment's consideration, the doctor finally broke whatever private, non-verbal conversation he was havin' with Uhura and stood, pacing. "This ain't exactly a barn dance, Scotty. What Jim's looking for down there might be the key to saying his life. Least, he thinks so."

Scotty's brain completely stalled out at the words. "I… No, I just saw Jim this morning, he seemed fine." He said, at a loss. "What the bloody hell is going on?" As the moments wore on while Bones paced and didn't explain, Scotty felt that utter shock and confusion turn to frustration, then to worry. When the Scotsman had a chance to look over at Sulu, it gave him a small amount of comfort to know that the acting captain seemed almost as confused and frustrated as Scotty did.

Sulu turned to look at the doctor. "Bones, what are you talking about? I know the captain's been on the bridge a lot, but, he said that it was just a side effect of what Circe had done. It helped keep his head clear."

"You thought it was because Jim didn't want anyone to know." That had come from Uhura. So she _did_ know what had been going on with the captain. "But… the truth is much more complicated than that."

"Without going into too many details, on account of Jim himself not being here to decide how much he really wants to tell anyone, he looks a helluva lot like a man Diana knew back in her days as Wonder Woman. And Circe dropped the neural pattern of that guy from Diana's past into Jim's head."

The silence stretched as Scotty tried to process the utterly impossible-sounding situation. When he finally spoke, all he could say was: "Are ye _daft,_ man?!"

"I sure as hell don't like it, either," Bones groused. "But, if Jim had had his way, he wouldn't have told anyone. I had to give him medical orders to tell Spock, only so he could keep an eye on him. When he was on the bridge, he was Jim. It was only when he started to see Diana that things got rough."

"And that's when he had the seizure…" Sulu said. He seemed to be taking all of this in stride, which made Scotty wonder if he'd been seeing signs from all the time on the bridge.

Scotty, on the other hand, spent all his time in Engineering, so no one had seen fit to tell him! "Ye've got to be putting me on," He said, somewhere between a growl and a disbelieving sigh. "Ye mean to tell me that Jim's been, what, goin' mad as a hatter, and that it might kill him? And no one thought to tell two members of the bloody senior staff?" He motioned to himself and to Sulu.

Sulu almost sheepishly held a finger up to stop him. "I actually knew the basics about the memories. The captain thought this temporal anomaly in the planet's cultural and scientific records might be the key to fixing this." He glanced over at Bones, annoyed. "I would have liked to have known there was medical risk, though, doctor."

Uhura chimed in, trying to soothe the brewing tension as usual. "The only reason I know is because Spock knows I've struck up a friendship with Diana. And Jim was avoiding her to keep his head on straight. We were all worried about the toll that would take on both of them."

"That explains why Diana thought the captain really had sent me to check on her…" Sulu had gone thoughtful. If he was angry that he had been excluded from this _very_ important conversation, it didn't seem to bother him. But, to be honest, very little seemed to get under the lad's skin. "And the captain never even let on that he was anything more than tired. That seizure has started countless rumors across the ship that I've been trying to shut down."

Scotty practically exploded at that. "He had a bleeding seizure! He's dyin'! I was there for the _last_ time he died! Don't ye think we had a right to know what was going on? What if he'd had another one when he came to Engineerin' later that day! I thought he was just tired, that he'd just forgotten why he was down there!" Before Bones could speak, Scotty had gone red-faced, all Scottish fury and ferocity. "Ye're off your head if ye think I wouldn't have respected his bloody privacy, but I had a right to know! Sulu had a right to know!" He shoved away from the briefing room table, standing angrily. "Unbelievable! We've spent years together and after all this time, ye'd think I deserved a little more courtesy!"

"Oh, come off it, man, it's not like I did it to spite you! I wanted Jim to go right to Starfleet Medical, but he got this - this Delphi thing into his head and wouldn't let it go!" Bones fired back, only to confuse the engineer more. "He thinks there's some sort of temple or alien or something down on Argelius that could fix him. Since I don't have the first clue how to treat him, he and Spock decided that was where to go. And Diana volunteered herself, because of _course_ she did."

"Och, now hang on a minute," Scotty had fired himself up so badly, the change in focus from the captain to Ambassador Prince was what he needed to steady his nerves. Taking a deep breath, he wiped his mouth, a hand propped on his hip while he considered what Bones had said. "Ye mean to tell me Diana's gone with him while she might be the whole bloody reason he's in this mess in the first place? Did _anyone_ think that maybe he had a reason to keep her at arm's' length?" When he realized he had everyone's eyes on him, and Uhura seemed especially rankled, he felt the need to explain. "Look, I dinnae think any of us believes that Diana would ever try to hurt the cap'n. But, if she's at the center of it, it doesn't matter how sweet and noble she is, if she's makin' it worse, maybe the best thing to do was to go back to Starfleet and let them sort him out."

"You've met Diana, you know she wouldn't agree to that." Uhura said. Her body language made it pretty clear she would defend Diana no matter what.

"No one says she has to agree to it. He's the cap'n. And if we'd known that seeing her would give him _seizures_ \- "

"Dammit, Scotty, I had those conversations, with Diana _and_ the captain. This was the option they went with." Bones said, effectively putting his foot down. "Do I tell you how to fix the warp core?"

"If I'd gone bloody _mad_ , I'd like to think ye'd not let me blow us up and kill us all!"

" _Hey!_ " Sulu stood. Without Jim and Spock there, it had been easy to let tempers flare. Normally, the captain did a good job of keeping debate a little more low-key. When Scotty and Bones turned to face him, Sulu's jaw was set, and his expression suggested the discussion was over. "Mister Scott, if you really want to take it up with the captain when we get back, I suggest you file a complaint. But, what's done is done. He's on the planet, and we're now on the other side of the system while the Romulans or Klingons are chasing us. So, let's figure out where the ship is and get back to Argelius. With any luck, this temporal anomaly that the captain's tracking will have the solution he's been looking for. But, we trust Captain Kirk. Let's act like it."

Sighing, Scotty nodded, conceding the point. "Aye. Of course, you're right. Jim knows his own head." Glancing up at the doctor, he sighed. "And I'm sorry. I know if ye could have, ye would've told me."

Bones shrugged. "Patient-doctor privilege has to go a long way, Scotty. It wasn't intentional."

With that, the group was dismissed. As Scotty stood there, still trying to get his temper back down to normal levels, Bones clapped him on the shoulder as they filed out.

Alone in the briefing room, Scotty had only his thoughts to keep him company. Jim was dying. Again.

He couldn't stop recalling the haunted, pained expression on Jim's face when he'd slumped into the containment chamber. He just hoped he'd never had to see that again.

* * *

Long after Scotty had left the briefing room and the crew had returned to their stations, Nyota's stomach refused to settle. Even after she'd returned to her comms console and began to play back the minutes of open audio leading up to the warbird attack, the argument between officers had left her worried.

She knew that Scotty had every right to be upset with them. But, she also knew that after several years together, Scotty knew it had not been a personal slight. That being said, even when Spock told her about why the seizure had occurred, she'd asked him to bring the rest of the senior staff in.

But, Jim didn't want the crew to know how badly he was doing. Nyota had a feeling he'd be making it up to Sulu and Scotty for weeks. But, then again, knowing how the trauma of Steve Trevor's memories had been affecting him, it was entirely possible that was why he'd been so unusually cagey. Since Nyota hadn't had the opportunity to really ask him about it - she wasn't even _supposed_ to know - she would have to demand an explanation after he returned to the ship.

And they would certainly have that conversation. Sometimes, Jim was his own worst enemy.

Something caught her ear and made her pause. Tilting her head, she reached for a particular dial and ran the audio log back. This was common. Aural sensitivity like hers often relied on repetition, and so she spent the next few moments running back a section of open audio then playing it again.

In the moments before the warbird had transmitted the federation command codes, there was a three second span of quick fluctuation. She could hear it, but she couldn't quite place what it was. "Lieutenant Sulu," Nyota said, using the more formal designation so that he'd realize it was related to the task he'd set her on. "I think I've found something." The more she listened, the more clearly recognizable the signal was.

Sulu made his way over to her station. "What is it?"

"There's a signal delay in the open hail. It corresponds to their comms array frequency. Those D7s can't switch frequencies as well. It leaves a sort of echo when they switch to frequencies that are too close. I think I can use that to listen in on the ship. Right now." She glanced back at him, smiling as she switched frequencies.

"Great, let's find out who's on the other end."

Nyota turned into the other frequency, hoping that whoever was on that warbird hadn't maintained a complete ship silence.

The frantic chatter on the other end of the communication was panicked, worried. But, Nyota instantly recognized the language. "Romulans." She said, scowling. "They're definitely speaking Romulan."

"Any idea what they're talking about?"

Uhura pursed her lips as she tried to concentrate on the overlapping voices. "They're talking about…" For a moment, she wasn't sure she had translated the words correctly. "About a…" She waited, listened to the orders and the confused voices again. No, she had heard it the same every time. "A woman deflecting their disruptor beams to the surface." She swivelled in her chair to face Sulu. "I think they're firing on the planet. And I think Diana's _stopping_ them."

Sulu turned to his operations officer. "Is the warbird firing on Argelius IV?" The officer nodded. He glanced back at Uhura, determined. "What do you say we go help Diana?" When Uhura smiled, he turned back to the captain's chair and took a seat.

"Set course for Argelius IV. Let's get that heat off her back."

Uhura swiveled in her chair to watch the viewscreen as the ship pulled free of the gas giant's atmosphere and sped towards the planet. Within moments, they could clearly spot the warbird in orbit around the planet, green disruptor fire streaking at the surface. On the far side of the planet, the temporal anomaly that they had seen earlier was seemingly stuck to the northern continent like a fish on a hook.

A planetary bombardment like that would have been devastating to the planet, not to mention a clearly inhumane act to colonize it similar to how they'd taken other worlds. The Romulans were notorious for obliterating colonies from other races, but never leaving enough evidence to definitively point to them.

But, the disruptor fire never made it to the surface. A streak of that same fire came right back at the ship, striking one of the lower decks.

"That must be Diana." Nyota said with a smile, unable to contain her sheer amazement that Diana was somehow fending off a warbird.

"Well, she's probably a bit tired, so let's give her a break and test out our new systems. Target phasers and strafe their bow. Let's see how Mister Scott's calibrations worked out." Sulu was still level and relaxed, but Nyota could tell he was formulating multiple strategies. Most likely, he was trying to figure out if the cloaking device could be hit before they went back undercover.

The phaser fire ripped across the bow of the warbird before they could get their shields up. Explosions flared, then suddenly vanished in vacuum across multiple decks. From the ops console, the officer reported:"Direct hit to primary systems. The warbird is breaking off the attack from the planet and moving to leave."

"Pursue them, do not let up!" Sulu ordered, then glanced over to Uhura. "Lieutenant, see if you can raise the Captain."

Turning back to her console, Nyota quickly tried to raise the captain, but received no response to the hail. She switched over to Spock's frequency, but still no answer. Suddenly, her churning stomach seemed to make more sense. Her intuition already knew what was wrong, even as she used her console to switch to an ops view long enough to scan for lifesigns.

"Lieutenant Sulu," She said, careful to keep the worry out of her voice as she turned to face him. "The captain and commander aren't on the planet. Their lifesigns and comm signals are gone."

If Diana was in the atmosphere fighting a warbird somehow…. Where was the captain? Where was Spock?

* * *

Spock was gone. One second, Jim had heard an explosion or rumble behind him, and the next, he was standing in a field alone. No, not entirely alone. Apollo, still resembling his father, stood beside him. As Jim turned to look behind him, only to see more grass and blue sky, an ever-expanding and lush green pasture, he ignored the beauty of it as he worried over where his friend had gone.

"Spock?" He called, not bothering to hide his sudden worry.

 _I am here, Jim. It seems I will be unable to join you while you are in the Nexus._ His friend's voice was faint, but immediately soothed him. _My thoughts are with yours, and I shall endeavor to keep you connected._

"Your commander is grounded to the Temple. He cannot join us in Elysium." When Apollo spoke, he heard less of his father's voice now The timbre of it was right, but the tone, the inflections, they were all wrong. It was just far enough from normal to make Jim recognize that for as pretty a picture as this all was, it wasn't real. And that they were connected telepathically to this place, thanks to Spock. That was why Apollo had known what he was thinking.

"So… Spock stays put and we're here." Jim said, almost tiredly assessing the situation. "And we're… in the Nexus. Which looks like something out of an old pastoral." Jim strode forward, not realizing he was near the crest of a hill that overlooked another portion of the fields. Sure enough, as if in those pastoral paintings from Earth's history, a group of women were laughing and running in the distance, chasing each other with handfuls of… blackberries, maybe? The innocent fun he had seen on countless pieces of artwork, both in class and from casual exposure. The women wore flowing chitons of radiant white cloth, their hair freely dancing in the wind as they ran. At the front of the pack, one woman ran faster than the rest, holding an apple in her hand. "This feels a bit… uncanny." Jim finally managed, glancing over at Apollo. Jim didn't give much thought to what might be on the other side of death's door. He'd been there once before and as far as he knew, he didn't remember any of it. But, to be honest, this seemed a little…

"This is not your Elysium, James T. Kirk." Apollo said with a chuckle. "This is that Elysium that my family gave to our people. Those were simple times, and required simple joys." He pointed to that woman at the head of the pack. "Atalanta requires very little but the land to run and the freedom to never grow tired. In life, she honored my sister Artemis with an oath of chastity. She would not marry until a man could best her in a race. A young sailor called to Aphrodite for assistance and threw golden apples to steer Atalanta off her path. And so she married. And now, in her paradise, my sister has promised her the freedom to run these hills, unencumbered, through all eternity. Such are the rewards we promised to our great warriors and heroes."

Jim smiled a bit as he watched the woman race through the fields. For a moment, it was easy to lose himself in the story, in the sheer… joy of it all. Guinan had been exactly right. For that girl below him, sprinting freely through the fields, she was living in a constant state of joy.

It was a temporal anomaly, though. A higher state of existence, but an anomaly grounded in scientific fact all the same. And it might remain beyond his understanding for his entire life, and that would be just fine. But, if he started to think of the place as some otherworldly, spiritual equivalent of heaven… well, that would make it harder to leave.

"I'm not exactly what you could call spiritual." Jim remarked, glancing over at Apollo as he voiced his rational skepticism. "So forgive me if I don't understand why there would be a version of this place that's mine at all."

"Elysium, the Nexus, it is infinite in its capacity, and manifests as an extension of an individual's desires. I have only brought you here because this is how I enter the Nexus, where I see those supplicants that honored me in their life and are now here in everlasting paradise after death." Apollo began to walk down the hill. As he did so, Jim followed with ease until they reached the same path the women had trod only moments before.

Where there had just been more grass, now Jim could see trees in the distance. It was still a bit of a hike, but the weather seemed perfect somehow. It was the kind of day he loved back home: it was warm and sunny, but the breeze was cool.

It was idyllic. He could understand it being called something like heaven. And as they walked, Jim was more and more aware of the fact that he didn't have someone else in his head. Even when they had been in the temple, he'd felt like he was in control but there was some sort of itch at the back of his mind. He still felt like he knew Steve's memories were his own and felt foreign.

Here in the Nexus, though, he was definitely _just_ Jim Kirk. It was a breath of fresh air, but also somehow... empty.

Guinan had said something about Steve choosing to leave the Nexus. That Jim was supposed to be his reincarnation. If he remembered his religion courses in school and the academy, then there was something odd about that notion.

"I don't remember the ancient Greeks having a concept of reincarnation." Jim said as they walked. The longer they kept on their path, the more he felt almost absurdly at ease.

"Mythology has a purpose. Religion and ritual has a purpose." Apollo replied as their feet rustled through the long grass. _This should be itchy…_ Jim thought idly. "The Fates have all mastery of the threads that mortals live by. As they spin your thread, they wind it through the great tapestry of time. But, we have had occasion to pull great heroes from the tapestry to weave into another great task. We have recalled Odysseus several times to defend the people of earth. As a man who faced unspeakable adversity and hardship, he is uniquely situated to inspire others." The man chuckled, and for a moment, it felt like hearing his dad on some of those logs. "Of course, we learned early on: if Odysseus is called, so must his great love Penelope. For a great journey requires great reward."

Jim rose an eyebrow, chuckling a bit. "That sounds a bit… far-fetched."

"Any more far-fetched than your exact resemblance to Steve Trevor? Or that you have empowered my sister with your faith in her?" Apollo laughed as Jim bristled from the remark. "You are a contradiction, James T. Kirk. A man of science and a man of faith and disbelief. You pride yourself on seeking out that which cannot be quantified, yet when presented with the supernatural you falter. Your heart and your head continue to conflict."

The two of them paused as they reached the tree line, the forest remarkably dark within. "For paradise, that doesn't look very inviting." Jim quipped, beginning to move forward.

A hand on his shoulder stopped him. Jim turned, and found himself no longer facing a man resembling his father…. But the god that Diana had described. Even down to the golden crown of laurels. "This is no light matter. Here, James, I can no longer travel with you."

Jim scoffed. "You're the one who wanted me to come here, and now you're saying you won't go?"

"I am a god of the Greeks and as such, have souls that worship me. But, I am not a lord of the dead. I cannot enter this place. It is a place of dreams." Apollo glanced over at the treeline before continuing, looking Jim in the eye. He finally felt like he'd seen the god, and could see that there was genuine concern. He didn't know Jim aside from one of any other short-lived humans, but he cared what happened nonetheless. "You must understand. While your people stopped believing in us, we did not abandon you. But, it took a great toll. And now: Diana, my sister, has returned to protect you. But, we knew it would be a long journey for her. That is why we sent for you."

"'We?'" Jim echoed.

"Soon, my sister Athena will explain. But, now is not the time for you to know. If you choose that path, you will learn." He motioned to the treeline. "But, much like Orpheus, you must take this journey on faith. You may not look back. If you do, then you will forever be James T. Kirk, and you will lose all knowledge that you were once Steve Trevor. But, if you push forward…" Apollo smiled. "You will be everything that she needs. And that he wants you to be. For you both." The god stepped back, another burst of that cool breeze between them. "Good luck. And I hope you choose the path of greater valor."

Jim turned back towards the forest. Idly, his hand reached for his phaser that should have been at his waist. He wasn't all that surprised to find it missing. _You're in paradise, what would you need a phaser for, Jim?_ He asked himself. Steeling himself, he took a deep breath and considered looking back the way he came. Apollo had said if he turned around, he'd forget. He'd never know why he'd gone this far…

That wasn't Jim Kirk. He didn't let mysteries lie.

Jim pushed past the trees and began to move into the darkness. The forest was cold, a sudden onslaught of nighttime, winter air. As he kept walking, he knew that he should have been freezing. It was easily cold enough to snow, yet he felt entirely comfortable. And he recognized the terrain. This was Belgium. Again. Which mean that up ahead would be…

"Son." The voice made Jim stop in his tracks. It came from behind him, but he knew it. It had been the same voice on the probe reports, in his mother's logs, and used by the god Apollo only minutes ago. It was his father. His father was here in Elysium… "Where are you going? Let me see you. Turn around."

Jim began to pivot, then stopped. The realization hit him like a bucket of ice water. He _couldn't_ turn back. This was what Apollo meant. Temptations to pull him back. That was what had doomed Orpheus in that myth, right?

"I shouldn't be surprised." Another voice. Jim shut his eyes as his heart clenched painfully, longing to turn around. _Chris_ … "You have greatness in you, Jim, but not an ounce of humility. You can't even turn around to look at me and your old man." He stood firm, jaw set. He steeled himself against the temptation. If Chris Pike and his dad were here, well…. Then, he knew they'd be just fine without him.

But, he wanted to turn around and see their faces so badly…

To think, Diana had been dealing with that temptation since she had met Jim. Thinking of her, the way she smiled at him, as if both impressed and exasperated at times, the way he could make her laugh…

He couldn't leave her. Maybe that was selfish, but for the first time in years, he cared about someone as much as he cared about his ship and her crew.

Ghosts were just that: ghosts. He couldn't bring them back. That was why Apollo had chosen to look like his father. To stop him from the temptation to see him again.

Jim kept moving forward, ignoring the way they both kept calling his name. When he caught sight of a flicker of light in the distance, he sped up. His pace quickened as the voices became pained, pleading. For a moment, he thought he could even hear Ambassador Spock calling for him.

And then he spilled out from the trees and came to a stumbling halt just before a _very_ familiar campfire.

Jim looked up at the figure standing next to the campfire, still stirring the soup pot. He grinned, a smile that reached his eyes as relief flooded him. "Chief…. You're here." Jim laughed a bit. "I thought maybe I'd imagined you."

Chief moved over to him. "I promised you that we could guide you. And I will." Pulling off one of his black gloves, clasping Jim's arm. He returned the gesture. "Here, I am Napi. And I will walk you through the visions so that you will understand."

"Understand…" Jim breathed, brow twitching with confusion. "I don't know that I'll understand any of this."

"It's all right," He replied, patting Jim on the back. "You are in the Nexus. Here, you have all eternity to learn."


	29. Song for Eurydice, Part 2: Act III

**Song for Eurydice, Part 2: Act III**

Eternity. The Nexus could take an eternity or the blink of an eye. For some reason, Jim had this odd sensation that he already knew that. And not just because he'd heard it from Guinan…

While Jim recalled this place from his dreams and from the time he'd spent combating Steve's invasive memories, it seemed different. The mortar and gunfire was absent both in sound and vision. No flashes of light in the distance to color smoke and clouds with ugly colors not meant to be in the air. He recalled Steve's sense of… weight and dread, of something that Jim saw as paranoia because he'd never had to carry that kind of animalistic trauma within him. Yet, that was strangely absent here. It was almost as if time was frozen for them. It wasn't a memory, it was a tableau.

The longer Jim sat across from Chief, staring at the roaring campfire, the more he felt like he'd always been here. Not as Steve… but as himself.

"You feel so comfortable here because the Nexus wants you to be." Chief - no, Napi - said, as if reading Jim's mind.

He blinked, his blue eyes darting from the fire back up to the man he had only ever seen in dreams before a few moments ago. Or had it been a few hours… days, even?

"Time has no meaning here." The other man continued as he broke a few twigs in his hands, tossing them into the fire one at a time. "You can replay your best memories of your life as many times as you wish, or you could walk new paths. You can go forward, watch your children be born, or go back, and see your father. But, if you do that, it's easy to - "

"To get lost, yeah…" Jim finished for him, a slight smile pulling at his mouth. Again, he thought Commodore Paris's kind and quiet way of reminding him that a captain had to be his own compass. No one else could be that guide for him. He knew why he was out in the galaxy, what he fought for and why he was out there.

At least, he thought he did until he learned of Steve Trevor, and every facet of Jim's life seemed to lead right back to Steve.

"Don't do that." Napi said, short and decisive. He shook his head. "You don't understand it all yet."

It was as if Napi knew that Jim hated being told to _wait_ more than anything else. Jim rose and came around the fire, facing the Blackfoot as he stood to his full height. "Then show me. Because I came here to find out what I am, who I am. I want to be Jim Kirk."

"If you wanted to be Jim Kirk, you would have turned around when your father called your name." He said, matter-of-factly. "You want to make a difference. You want to know that your name will be passed down the generations because you burned as bright as the North star." To illustrate the point, Napi motioned for him to look up. As they did, a shooting star streaked across the starscape above. "But, what Diana's people are offering is much more than that."

"You know, if it's one thing that every one of you long-lived species have done, it's tout riddles. You're as bad as Spock." Jim said, a wry smile on his face. Here with Chief, it felt like he was in the presence of an old friend, but there was so much he simply didn't know. And it wasn't just Chief. He was Napi. That name sounded familiar, and it bothered Jim that he couldn't quite recall why.

"We know the value of patience. When you've lived as long as we have, you learn that humans have a limit to how much they can learn at once." He pat Jim on the shoulder. "There are secrets you won't learn while you're here. Not yet. And there are things I can't tell you, because it's not my place." Before Jim could remind him that he did have a crew and a ship to get back to, Napi motioned to the dark path ahead of them. "But, if you're ready. We'll begin."

"I'm ready." He replied honestly. He'd heard shadows of his father, of Chris, of Ambassador Spock. He knew he couldn't look back. There were no answers there. "So, where do we go first?"

Napi reached up, adjusting his hat and his jacket, then took one of his large steps forward. "Forward. It's not far." He walked around the smuggler's tent, still full of books and beer, and Jim followed after.

This path was wide, well-lit by a full moon in the sky. The terrain itself seemed non-descript, just like any other footpath in the woods. As they continued on, leaves crunching underfoot, the moonlight began to shift from its silver haze to a more blue hue. It reflected off of leaves and tree trunks that framed the path until Jim realized he didn't really see a forest from Belgium - or even Earth anymore.

He had stepped into the gardens on the _Yorktown_.

His feet slowed to a halt as he took in his new surroundings. He couldn't place when the transition had happened. Nevertheless, he was surrounded by bioluminescent plants and distinctly felt bulkhead under his feet, not gravel. "The gardens. It's where Diana and I almost…" He trailed off as he caught Napi looking his way.

Jim wasn't much for embarrassment, but this seemed… too private a memory to share. It also wasn't where he expected to go. Before he could ask Napi why they'd found this place, however, the older man walked past him and continued through the gardens. Naturally, Jim followed, but his gaze kept getting pulled to the flowers and vines that reminded him of having Diana so close to him, her lips nearly to his.

At the time, it had been as simple as breathing. He still wanted to kiss her. But, he couldn't reconcile the notion that he already knew what that felt like. Because of Steve.

"You know why memories fade over time?" Napi suddenly asked ahead of Jim as he casually moved an overly affectionate glowing vine out of his way, even as it tried to coil around his hat. "Because if you remembered everything as vividly as you lived it, you'd never move forward. It's a great defense mechanism. And it's a great motivator. You keep looking for the next vivid experience." He glanced back at Jim, and as he was wont to do, the captain of the _Enterprise_ lengthened his gait so he was alongside him. Jim knew he was incapable of following someone for too long. He didn't like to look at someone's back. He enjoyed feeling like their equal. "That's why you're having such trouble with this. When you look back on the women you've loved, do you remember how it felt to be with them as if you were there right now?"

Jim chuckled. "Of course not, more like a highlights reel." Of course, thinking back, none of them really could hold a candle to how he felt just being in Diana's presence. "Carol made me smile and always was good for a debate, but Diana seems to light up the room. I don't think about Carol with the same vivid detail, or with the same… heartache I know I used to have."

"Because that is the beauty of time. And in the Nexus, where there is no time, each moment feels as if you're living it, and yet like it's already happened." Napi paused as they reached the end of the gardens. Jim remembered this door. It led out of the gardens and towards the thoroughfare where the shops were, including the ice cream parlor. "That's why you can't come to grips with this. When we gift one of you the memories of a past life, it's through a haze so that you don't struggle with knowing that three weeks ago, you couldn't have possibly been in Veld and on some planet across the galaxy."

Jim shifted to face him fully as the pieces finally began to fall into place. "You're saying that I can't accept that I'm… Steve, because I can't just… recall the events without reliving them?"

Another one of those quiet smiles appeared. Jim couldn't recall ever seeing him smile in the memories he'd lived as Steve. Maybe there was a reason for that. "This is why I like you, James. You have the benefit of a perpetually open mind. Steve would be the first to tell you that he _wished_ he could have done the same."

Jim crossed his arms over his chest, looking around - but careful never to look back. "So, what, we're just going to walk through these tableaus until it all clicks?"

Napi shook his head, then motioned to the door. "No. You just need to go through that door."

Jim glanced over at the door, then to Napi beside him. It was a request with about as much mystery befitting the situation. And his curiosity had to be sated.

Captain Kirk stepped onto the bridge of the _Enterprise,_ surrounded by his crew.

The bridge was running with peak efficiency, with Spock evenly intoning, "Captain on the bridge," as the officers all turned to face him. Even Pavel, who he hadn't seen in months, sat at his navigator's position with that boyish grin and a lust for the next adventure.

Without thinking, Jim smiled and nodded to his shipmates as he strolled down to the chair. He could see himself slipping into the seat, used to the cushions that were just worn enough to be both comfy yet firm.

He heard Uhura giggle from behind him. He was back on his ship. The ordeal was over.

No, the ordeal had never happened. From here, he could see it all perfectly. As Sulu punched in new coordinates, as Janice Rand flashed him a smile from the operations station… everything was running just as it should.

It was a perfect day on the _Enterprise,_ one that had never been marred by a witch tearing up the consoles or by Balthazar Edison, or Khan. Nothing would ever go wrong. There would be planet after planet, nebula and spectral phenomenon a plenty to seek out.

"This is my Nexus, isn't it?" He asked quietly, watching Pavel at the console below him.

"Yes." Napi replied. He had moved down to stand beside him by the chair, in the position Bones typically occupied. "Here, every day is a new adventure, and everyday, it all runs smoothly. Surrounded by the crew you call family. It's what you want."

Kirk smiled for a moment, considering the endless possibilities. But, something about it seemed off. He'd always been comfortable on days like this one. But, they weren't the reason he was in that chair. "They're not really here, though." He said, watching the young ensign he knew was now transferred off his ship. "They'll live their own lives, have their own careers. This… wouldn't be real."

The crew vanished from the bridge. Jim stood on his bridge, alone save for a man distinctly out of time and the pinging of sensors, constantly giving perfect readouts.

"The Nexus is a place for the self, James." Napi remarked beside him, staring out the viewport. "It gives you what you want, and it's as real as you will let it be. It's a place free of fear, of shame - "

"It's free of risk." Jim said, almost disappointed. "I did this for three years. I had the three years of nothing but really good days, and it started to get boring. I nearly stopped flying because I forgot what I was doing out here."

Napi turned to face him, hands in his jacket pockets. "So, what were you doing out there? What makes you Jim Kirk, Captain of the _Enterprise_ , not for her good days, but for her bad?" The way he asked the question, Napi already knew the answer.

But, he needed to hear it from Jim. It was another riddle. "Without risk, there's no real reward." He said. "And that's why I do it. Because the reward, the good it does, outweighs the risk. How could I ever be truly happy here when I know there will be people suffering, that I could be helping? This isn't a reward, this is a prison."

Napi walked back up to Jim, then towards the back of the bridge. Without thinking, Jim turned and followed him. "So, you would give all of this up, an eternity of peace, if you knew it would mean others suffered?"

"In a heartbeat." He replied. "A manufactured peace, designed for me, isn't really peace. I'd sacrifice this for anyone out there." Jim glanced over to his right. For the first time since entering the bridge, he realized it had been missing someone. "And Diana wasn't here. She's as much a member of my crew as anyone else."

"But, that's not a journey she'll ever take." Napi remarked. "If the gods are immortal because someone believes in them, do you honestly think anyone would be able to take her from the world?"

Jim's eyes widened. She was in Starfleet's history, in pre-Federation history, and she'd most assuredly be in the Themysciran culture's mythology even if she never returned. Jim had considered that she'd be long-lived.

But, it finally struck him.

She was immortal. Jim or Steve could live a thousand lives…

She'd never come here herself. How could Jim ever be happy with just an imitation? How could… _Oh_.

Napi nodded, patting him on the back for a moment. "I think you're ready for the rest of the journey." He motioned to the turbolift, then took a step back.

Jim tore his gaze away from the empty spot on the bridge, looking to Napi once more. "Are you coming with me?"

He just smiled. "I think you know where you need to go. You don't need me for this."

Jim extended a hand to him, suddenly aware of something that had plagued him about Steve's memories. "Who are you, really? You're not a memory."

"To my people, I was the First Man. As Napi, I would lead them on spirit quests."

"You're a god… Not just a member of the Blackfoot tribe. But, an… actual god. That's..." Jim smiled, laughing in amazement as those memories from the campfire were colored in a new light. "That's what you said to Diana when you met her." Napi had helped him, a simple human. "Thank you. For all of it."

Napi just clasped Jim's hand tighter, that slight smile pulling into a real one. "And that's why I like you, James. Good luck. And remember, do not look back."

Jim turned and waited for the turbolift doors to open.

As he stepped through the threshold, he found himself not surrounded by the shaft, but rather by a place he hadn't been in years.

"I'll be damned…" He breathed, grinning slowly as he recognized the cherry red convertible in the musty, stinky garage of his childhood. He'd driven that thing off a cliff when he was a kid. But, if the car was here…

Jim stepped around the car, closer to the closed garage door. A PX70 motorcycle sat propped up against the wall. Not just any motorcycle… "Dad's bike." He reached out, touching the seat as he considered how long it had been since he'd seen it. It looked better than the one Jaylah had salvaged on the _Franklin_.

Moments later, he swung the garage door up and open and mounted the bike. He started it, facing the old dirt paths of his childhood, and took off down the roads.

He drove over the hills that he hadn't jumped out of fear or nerves, he skidded and chewed up dirt and dust wherever he went. He rode for what felt like hours, and it might have been. The sun began to set, then sank beneath the horizon as he reached a washed out gully he remembered from his youth. He'd jumped it probably fifty times as a kid. Scared the hell out of him every time. The only reason he could jump it was because of the lip in the road that kicked the bike up a foot.

Jim revved the bike and went for it. He landed it flawlessly, then hit the brakes, skidding to a halt.

No fear. Nothing. No thrill of the danger. He considered glancing back, then thought better of it. This place wasn't real. He could only get out of it what he put into it.

He looked ahead and kept driving. He recognized a building as he rapidly approached. It was the same bar he'd been kicked out of countless times. It was the same bar where Chris had picked him off the floor.

The bike rolled to a stop and Jim shut it off with ease. He knocked the kickstand down with his foot and swung off of the bike. He took his time, drinking in the moment as he walked towards the building. Here, he'd been just Jim. It had been so long ago, before he knew who he was. But, maybe that was the point.

Jim opened the door, expecting to hear club music and raucous conversation.

Instead, he found golden lamplight and a quiet bar. He knew exactly where he was.

This was Veld.

"I'll walk beside you through the world today," The voice was instantly recognizable. It had been rattling around his brain for days. "While dreams and songs and flowers bless your way.

"I'll look into your eyes and hold your hand…" Charlie…

Jim turned to watch the Scotsman, playing the piano with practised ease, not the clunky, rough pace of disuse and fingers that shook from trauma. He looked good. Better than any memory Jim had seen.

"Aaah, there you are!" Jim barely had time to turn before he was face to face with Sammy, fez and all smiles. Of course, in his hand was a tray holding a single mug of ale, held aloft for him. "He's been waiting for you, Jim."

"Sammy…" Jim said, laughing a bit as he suddenly felt like he stood toe to toe with a close friend, not a borrowed memory. "You know who I am?"

"Of course. This isn't your first time here, or don't you remember? Now, take your drink and go see the man." Sammy motioned for him to take the ale, and when he did, he simply went, " _E voila._ " He stepped aside and motioned to the bar counter.

Jim instantly recognized the man sitting there. How could he not? He looked just like him.

Steve Trevor turned to face James T. Kirk, captain to captain. The gold uniform of a Starfleet captain and the leather jacket and sweater of a spy.

"It's about time we talked face to face." Steve said. "Again."

Again. Jim was staring at his doppelganger, his supposed former self, and the guy had just rattled off, casual as could be, that it was not the first time they'd apparently met.

"We've done this before?" Jim asked, glancing down at the beer in his hand.

Steve simply pat the bar counter next to him and swiveled back to drink his ale. After a moment of hesitation, mainly because this felt very uncanny and all too comfortable, Jim slid into the bar stool beside him.

Staring at the ale in his hand, Jim finally took a cautious swig. It wasn't as good as other drinks he'd had, but he'd take it. Jim paused as he noted something else. "It tastes better." He remarked, glancing over at himself. No other way to put it, now that they were side by side. Not a twin. It was staring at himself. "I guess the Nexus gives you what you want, and you wanted better beer."

Steve chuckled over the rim of his glass, shaking his head a bit. "Well, you've certainly mellowed since the last time I saw you." He swigged his glass and set it down. "That's neat." After a second, he finally offered to Jim in response. "Remember the last time you did something about as stupid as walking into the afterlife?"

Jim furrowed his brow. Thankfully, after a week of hearing Steve's voice poking in his head, he had begun to learn the differences. They spoke exactly the same, looked exactly the same, but Steve was… heavier. Even more reserved than Jim could be. Which meant Steve's humor had a little more bite to it. Or at least, it came off a little more resigned. "The warp core." Jim said, thinking back. "I died and…" Jim glanced around, noticing a table in the corner of the room. "Did we sit over there?"

"Maybe? Probably." Steve chuckled. "To be honest, the days all kind of blur together here. We might have." He turned in his seat a bit to face Jim. "Do you remember what we talked about?"

Jim's face went blank as he tried to recall the memory, but ended up shrugging. "I feel like I know we talked. In fact, now I can't believe I would have ever forgotten about it. But, the details are gone." He struggled to recall any of it. It reminded him of trying to paper out of water. He'd get close and it would flutter out of reach. "You told me that you had a deal for me."

"I did." Steve looked past Jim for a moment. It was as if he was watching the courtyard past the tavern. Watching for someone… They both knew who. "And as she's so fond of telling people, a deal is a promise and a promise is unbreakable. And it was a really easy one for you."

Jim could feel his mind crawling through the muck and mire, trying to recall what it was. "You said to…" he paused as the memory became clear. "To 'find her.' That was all I had to do. And you'd… make sure we'd both be happy." That twisted Jim's stomach uncomfortably, although he couldn't place why.

"Yeah. And you found her, so everything should have been great. But, then one of Diana's enemies had to go and screw it all up." Steve sighed and drained his mug of ale. No sooner than he set it down, Sammy came by and dropped off another one, even as he muttered, "Sammy, come on, I'm trying to work here…"

"OK, so, you told me to find her. And I did. That doesn't explain why I feel like everything and everyone has been specifically calling me right here." Jim even tapped the bar top to make a point. "And to you. And I don't remember you telling me who you were, not when I met you then, either."

"I didn't." Steve admitted. "I couldn't. It would have broken the deal I made with…" He shrugged, sighing as if he couldn't believe the next words out of his mouth. "With Athena…"

"The goddess - " Jim started.

Steve finished for him. "Of wisdom, oh, yeah. That's the one." He glanced back over at the fresh mug of beer, then went for another sip. Then again, Jim couldn't blame him. The drink didn't have much of an effect. "And that's because I was with you. She came to me before they made the decision to send me back. The only reason we've had this conversation is because none of what I want for you - for us - was possible until after you were born. Because in order for that to happen, I had to agree to leave here. The Nexus."

Jim's confusion was visible. "But, we didn't meet until I _died_."

"Because you were here in the Nexus. And you're not just a reincarnation. She said it was something about the timing.I don't pretend to understand all of it, but I find myself believing it. The Nexus… picked me up or something. Because it was close, I literally blew myself to Kingdom Come. Most people end up here over time and they never even know." Steve shrugged. "Because I died on a certain day, I… remember dying. So, I could leave. For the right reasons."

Jim shook his head. "You chose to leave the the Nexus for Diana."

"Yes. And I did." Steve rose from the bar top and pulled Jim up with him. "You _are_ me. I asked Athena specifically to give me a second chance. And this is it. _You're_ it." Steve smiled, an expression Jim had seen on his own face all too many times. The real smile, that barely contained excitement that went along with the next great adventure. "I waited here almost two hundred years, and every day was like the next. I keep waiting for Diana to walk through that door, but she's never going to. So I asked Athena to get me out of here. I died, I was fine with that, I had made peace with that. But, _this?_ Waiting for someone to walk through the door who never will? That's not heaven. This is a prison."

Jim opened his mouth to speak, but words seemed… hollow. For a moment, he thought of that empty bridge. "Yeah…" He managed, almost dumbly. "I know what you mean. "

"So, I hoped that if I had a second go-around, I could make up for the things I did. And then you had to go and get us killed before we found her. You were so unprepared for death that the Nexus brought you here. To your previous Nexus. The one you had in the life where you were me. So I used the little bit of knowledge of this place I had to push you in the right direction." Steve laughed a bit. "Don't you get it? I did all this for Diana. And not because she needs me, and I'll be the first to admit that. Because I need her. Because I want to be there to support her, and you feel the exact same way, even if you're busy pretending it's born out of your general love of your crew. Diana's different. You know that."

"You're right," Jim replied, trying to defend himself from a sudden lecture. "You're right, she _is_ different and I know that, but I'm not you. And _she_ knows that, and I remind her of you every time she sees me."

"But, that's the point!" Steve finally blurted. It was clear Jim was the source of all his frustration, too. "I'm you, but you don't have to be me! I asked for a second chance because I don't want Diana to have to deal with all my shit. I'd love to think that we would have won the war and everything would have been fine, but I did _so_ much that I'm not proud of. I never wanted her to have to share those burdens. I wanted to be _better_." He was practically pleading with Jim, as if eternity still wouldn't be enough time to work all this out. "I wanted to be better for _her_. And that's you! You're better. You didn't have the war hanging over your head, you still go to your job with a smile on your face, and your job is _amazing._ It's something out of a dime novel, sure, but you can give her everything I wanted to. And every decision you've made is one I probably would have made, but I'm the _starting_ point for you. I'm dead. I didn't make your choices for you. I didn't put you on the _Enterprise,_ you did that." He sighed. He seemed a bit more deflated, a bit more reserved. He was gauging his next words carefully. "Stop fighting me and just live your life. Get out of your own way. You don't have to make the mistakes I did. You can believe in gods and in her and you don't have to let your doubt tear you apart."

Jim found himself thinking of Napi, of the way he talked about memories. About how they were meant to be seen through a haze. Maybe that was how it was supposed to be for him. If all along, that was the crossroads they had to come to. "If I leave the Nexus, even if I remember this conversation, how would I explain this to Diana? Are you still going to be..." He motioned to the bar around them. "Here?"

Steve shook his head, that smile a little more poignant. "No. You had to get to this point to get this far. _We_ had to get this far. I'm dead, Jim, but I'm not gone. You get the best of both worlds. Because you can go back with all of the good stuff and none of the bad." He exhaled, a bit heavy. "I don't want to sit here waiting for her. And until you saw her, I wasn't. I was in here." Steve motioned to his heart with his hand. "Stop looking for me up here." He tapped his temple with two fingers. "What you remember, it will be both of us. As you make new memories with her, they'll start to fade. Everything that's Jim…" He smiled. "That's all you. I'm just along for the ride."

Jim was Steve's second chance. He didn't have to live up to the memory, he didn't have to constantly second-guess himself. Steve had said as much. He had asked Athena for another chance and Jim was that chance. And when they left the Nexus, Steve could be at peace.

"You love her," Steve said, not at all a question. It bordered on annoyance. "Stop being so damn afraid to tell her."

He didn't bother denying the truth. Steve had fallen in love with Diana in just days. Jim had had months, but it had been so intense, she had swept him off his feet. And he had been afraid he couldn't live up to the man in front of her.

"Doesn't mean she loves me," Jim said with a wry chuckle. In the distance, he thought he could hear that mortar fire returning.

"She does." Steve said with a grin. "I got those looks, I remember what they mean." He shoved the other man almost playfully, as if doing that would stop him from another lecturing. "You are so damn frustrating. Get over yourself!"

The mortar fire returned, and this time, the ground shook around them. Jim grabbed for the bar counter, concerned. "What the hell was that?"

Steve shifted and motioned for Jim to look through the window.

In the reflection, she was there. High in the sky, she was shimmering, a goddess in action against a bolt of energy.

Jim recognized it instantly. "That's disruptor fire…"

"She's defending the temple." Steve said. "For us."

"Then I have to get back." Kirk turned to face the other man. The bar was gone. Around them, the tarmac. The airfield, all those years ago. "When I leave, I won't see or hear you again, not like this."

Steve just smiled, hands in his pockets. "I wished for more time. And they're giving it to me. To us. So, just go. Do what I couldn't. Go save the world a few times." He took a few steps back as the rumbling grew louder. "Remember: great risk, great reward. Don't screw this up for us."

Jim turned towards Diana. She was in high in the sky now, still facing that disruptor beam. Before him, he could see Spock standing in the distance. Spock was grounded. To get to Spock was to get to the temple.

Jim sprinted forward, with the same fury that Steve Trevor had towards his own sacrifice.

He never looked back. He didn't have to. He could feel it now. What Steve meant.

He was in there. Just this once, Jim got the good stuff, and none of the bad.

"Jim." The Vulcan was clearly concentrating, but extended a hand to him. "Did you find what you were looking for?"

Jim could hear the mortar fire growing louder, but he felt renewed. At peace. "Yeah. I just found my Ambassador Spock. Let's go."

He touched Spock's outstretched hand.

* * *

The trio - Apollo, Spock, and Jim - walked out from the open doors to the Temple. Behind them, the Nexus flashed brightly before arcing off into the sky, no longer tethered to the door.

The temple had seen better times. Columns had fallen, there were bodies being tended to by acolytes.

"What has happened here?" Apollo boomed, now looking every bit the golden god Jim had seen before.

"There are Romulans attacking the planet." Guinan said, approaching them as she left the side of another injured acolyte. Jim's heart twisted, a hot coal of anger burned as he found himself faced with an enemy that he just knew would plague him. The Romulan Empire, this far out? That couldn't be good.

"Then we need to get back to the _Enterprise._ " Jim heard the telltale sound of the disruptor beam as it burned through atmosphere, then heard another righteous cry from somewhere above. He craned his neck to look up through the gap in the roof. "How long has she been doing that?"

It was Apollo who spoke instead. "Quite long enough. My sister has done what I could not while I assisted you. And now, they shall face my wrath." He turned to the Starfleet officers. "I will return you to your ship. I trust you've found the answers you sought, James."

Jim shrugged, not entirely sure he wanted to talk about them right now. The conversation with Steve had just been moments ago, but the more he thought of the Nexus, certain bits were fading. And thinking back to memories of World War I… felt like thinking of college. Odd. "I'm on the right track, let's put it that way. But, right now, I'm more worried about my crew."

"Then we will waste no time."

He wasn't kidding. Jim, Spock, Guinan, Diana and Apollo were suddenly back on the bridge, just moments after Uhura had been unable to account for their lifesigns.

And there was the Romulan warbird, turning to aim its phasers at the _Enterprise_.


	30. Song for Eurydice, Part 2: Act IV

**Song for Eurydice, Part 2: Act IV**

Diana was tireless, but even so, she knew that at some point, the warbird would need to change its course or its tactics. While she could continue to defend the Temple for some time, when the second disruptor beam clashed against her, it rattled both her teeth and her confidence. She had never considered that she would have to single-handedly defend a planet from a warbird, because the _Enterprise_ was supposed to be in orbit above them.

Where had the ship gone after they had lost communications? Were they safe? Did they even know the warbird was attacking?

Before she could truly consider the numerous possibilities as to where the ship had gone, the disruptor fire stopped. As she stretched her senses, attempting to gauge why they had ceased firing, she felt her stomach pull in a most unpleasant way.

Diana had just enough time to recognize she was being summoned by a god before she found herself suddenly on the bridge of the _Enterprise_ , slightly unsettled from the shift from flight to suddenly being on the ground. The warbird faced them menacingly in the viewport ahead, but she was more focused on one of the three men around her.

"Jim?" She breathed, almost hesitant to know who was standing before her.

The captain turned to her, not necessarily at ease, but certainly steadier than he had been since before the mission to Althea. He was concerned, to be sure, and was most certainly already formulating a plan as the captain of the _Enterprise_. "I'm all right." He said simply. It wasn't what he said, but how he said it that settled the knot in her stomach. "But, the planet won't be if that warbird has its way."

"Sir, we couldn't find you on sensors - " Sulu said as he rose from the captain's chair and made his way over to the suddenly present captain. "Shields are up, but how did you…" He trailed off, motioning to Kirk, Spock, then finally Apollo. "And who is he?"

Kirk sighed. "I'll explain after we solve the more immediate problem. How did that warbird sneak up and start bombarding the planet?"

"They had our command codes." Sulu quickly explained, much to Jim's visible concern. "They decloaked and tried to take out the ship before we were able to lose them and scramble our codes. We're back on equal footing, but we don't know how they got them. We came back to the planet as soon as we realized they were attacking."

"Which was why they broke off their attack against me," Diana added as she put together the order of those events.

"How did they know to attack the Temple?" Jim asked, looking to Apollo and Guinan for the answer.

It was Guinan who told him what she and Diana had already discussed. "Those are Romulans here to attack Diana. Someone ordered them to."

"For a Romulan warbird to have the Federation command codes of a fleet vessel would be a serious breach of security," Spock said, voicing the concern that presumably the rest of the crew felt.

"Then, they're going to tell me exactly how they got them," Jim remarked, stepping closer to the helm as Sulu took back his position. Again, the way he settled into his role as the captain, hawk-like and razor sharp in assessing the Romulans reminded her of her first time on the bridge. But, now, in hindsight, it also reminded her of Steve's same focus on the battlefield. With no time for answers as to his experience in the Nexus, Diana chose to see that as a positive sign for now.

"They're charging phasers!" The crewman at ops warned the bridge. It was only then that Diana noticed the dimmed lights and red klaxons on the walls. They were at red alert, in the midst of the battle.

"Acosta," Kirk ordered the crewman at ops. "Divert auxiliary power to shields and fire on their weapons systems. I want that ship."

Disruptor fire lashed out with the accuracy of Artemis's bow from the warbird. The ship buckled, shuddering under their feet. A quick glance at Sulu suggested that he was more relieved than usual at that. In return, the red phaser fire that Diana had seen only a few times before from the viewport arced back in return.

"Their shields are holding." Acosta reported, his voice tight and strained. He was probably a bundle of nerves. Diana expected to hear that the Romulans were attacking, or any number of other report items that were said in battle. When he didn't, Diana turned her attention back to the viewport as Acosta finally managed, "They're changing course. They're headed back to the planets with weapons at full strength."

"They're going to attack the planet again." Diana said, a knot settling in her stomach. "But, I'm not there. If they wanted to find me, then they are attacking innocents."

Kirk turned to his comms officer. "Uhura, open a channel, tell the Romulans that if they don't turn away from the planet, we will open fire again, and that if they're looking for Diana, she's here." He sent a furtive glance Diana's way, the two of them of the same mind. The _Enterprise_ could defend itself. The planet could not.

"Enough of this!" The voice was that of her brother. He had remained silent during the initial exchange, but now he had turned to face the viewport. "They have hurt enough of my supplicants. They will take no more lives." She could tell simply from the look of determination on Apollo's face that the Romulans had gone too far. For a brief moment, she thought of her conversation with Commander Spock. If Apollo took an action that the Federation could not condone, he would become their enemy. She became quite aware that her brother was probably about to do just that.

"Apollo, brother, please, let us handle this - " She said quickly.

Apollo turned to her, holding a hand up to silence her. "Diana, I do not expect you to agree or understand, sister. But, you will not stop me. My supplicants are _mine_. They do not belong to your Federation or these Romulans." The god turned towards the viewport and extended his other hand.

The viewport filled with a great flash of light, so bright that everyone on the bridge, including Diana, had to shield their eyes. It lasted for but a moment, and as it began to dissipate, the ship shuddered once more before finally going still.

When Diana blinked the spots from her eyes and looked back at the viewport… nothing remained of the warbird save a few floating pieces of debris.

The bridge was silent. Even the red alert klaxons had vanished as they normally did after prolonged use.

When Jim turned to face Apollo, it was the closest she'd ever seen him come to contained fury. "What the hell did you just do?" He said, lethal in tone and expression. He stalked forward, staring down the god with no fear, simply righteous anger to fuel him. " _What_ did you _do_ to that warbird?"

"I have defended my planet, James Kirk." Apollo replied, arms crossed over his chest as the picture of godly pride. "What I would have done had I not been in the Nexus with you."

Jim didn't back down. "They had our command codes. We needed to know how they got them and you just _destroyed_ our only intelligence." His anger was palpable, but his voice remained level until it became clear Apollo wouldn't listen. "This is a _Federation_ vessel, and it is under _my_ command. You just put my entire crew in even more danger." The way Kirk ground out the words were as much a hiss as they were a growl. It was almost as if he had been tempered, like steel. Stronger, cutting deeper. "You say you're a friend of humanity, then _act_ like one. My life didn't matter compared to theirs." Jim motioned to the bridge around him. "We don't kill indiscriminately - "

Apollo replied, even and fully aware that Jim Kirk presented no immediate danger to him. "You tell me you would advocate for the lives of the people who murdered your father? Who destroyed Vulcan? After all, you watched the planet be destroyed. You have no love for the Romulan Empire. I did you a favor."

It was clear that the statement had gotten under Jim's skin, and unsettled him. Diana herself could feel the Truth in what Apollo said. It twisted her stomach to think he was using it for his own gain, but it pained her more to realize that his father's death had been responsible for Jim's drive to always best the Romulans at their own game. "Enough, brother." She said, catching Jim's eye. She didn't wish for him to think she was overstepping his authority, but as she had told Spock, she would hold Apollo responsible for his actions. "The captain's motives are not in question here. No one expected the warbird to arrive, and given the serious intelligence breach, your actions have foolishly left them exposed. They have rules that must be followed, and you have broken many of them."

Apollo whirled, eyes flashing as he found himself challenged by his own blood. If Diana had had a bit more time to prepare the crew, she would have warned them that when the gods fought amongst each other, it normally ended poorly. "I am Apollo, son of Zeus, and I do not answer for your mortal alliances! You may choose to protect them, Diana, and for that, I am sure they will be as grateful as they were before." His note struck a sour, sarcastic tone that she chose to ignore. "But, these are my worshippers. I unified them under our language, I helped them avoid mutual assured destruction. I not only wish to protect them, but I need them. I cannot live without worship as you can, sister. I have caused them no harm, I have nurtured and protected them. And until they reach out to the Federation on their own, become one of your civilizations, then you cannot deny me my own vengeance against the people who attacked my planet. I did not request your aid, therefore I do not answer to your rules."

Diana's jaw set. She stepped closer, squaring off against the fellow god, right alongside Jim. "No one gave you this planet, brother. They have their own destiny."

"And I will nurture them, guide them. I will not interrupt it. And if you take umbrage with this, then I suggest you speak to our sister." Apollo turned his attention to Jim for a moment, then back to Diana. "Athena has spoken. It is done. Now leave my planet in peace." When it became clear that she couldn't stop him, nor was he technically wrong, she simply sighed and shrugged, looking to Jim. Apollo turned his attention to his Oracle. Guinan had remained silent since their arrival, placid but clearly not satisfied with the outcome. "Guinan. Return with me? My people need their Oracle, and given the gracious protection my sister offered in my absence… they will need your understanding."

Diana bristled. "I do not wish to become part of your new pantheon, brother."

He simply chuckled, although the darkness in it made it clear that their days as easy allies were over. If not permanently, certainly for the foreseeable future. "Then you should not have saved my people."

Guinan glanced from Apollo, then crossed towards Jim. It was if simply moving towards him had cooled some of the fire in Kirk's eyes. Just as well. He could not feasibly attack a god with his ship, and since the only casualties had been caused by or were the Romulans, he didn't have a recourse. "Did you find what you needed in the Nexus?" She asked the captain, her voice warm and full of hope.

It would be difficult to say that the Argelians were in danger with Guinan there to guide them.

Jim swallowed down his anger. Instead, he offered her a polite nod. "I did. I had to confront a few unpleasant truths, but… I found what I was looking for.." He tilted his head in a move that Diana knew all too well from both them. "... I think. It'll take a little bit of time to sort it all out."

"Good." She said, reaching out to rest a hand on his shoulder. "Take care of yourself, Jim." When he nodded again, she turned and made her way over to Diana.

"Guinan, you have my deepest thanks." Diana said softly as she reached out to take the woman's outstretched hands. "I am sure that we could find a place for you here, if you wished it."

The other woman chuckled. "This one's a little too small for my tastes."

Diana tilted her head, but realized it was another mystery Guinan would not reveal today. "Very well. I know you mean well for us. I promise your words have not gone unheard."

Guinan smiled, regarding Diana with a fondness that suggested they had been sisters on Themyscira, not strangers only hours before. "I promise you that if you keep digging, you will find the answers you're looking for. Remember, the universe isn't going anywhere tomorrow, so you have more time than you think. Don't try to rush the engines of destiny. It's easy to think you have to solve all problems now, but you can't borrow trouble from tomorrow. Focus on what needs to happen today." As she stepped away from Diana, the smile slipped from her features. "Even if that means there are sacrifices that have to be made. "

The warning was subtle, but it confused and worried both her and Jim enough that the two exchanged glances, prepared to ask Guinan for more…

Only to find that she and Apollo had disappeared from the bridge.

And the _Enterprise_ was now on the other side of the asteroid belt, much to the confusion of the navigators.

The gods were still at work, and none of them had the courtesy to explain themselves to Diana.

* * *

 _Captain's Log: Stardate 2264.66_

 _It is with great relief that I can report that Doctor McCoy has given me the all-clear regarding my health. For the first time in over a week, I can finally think clearly. I will admit that when we reached the surface of the planet, the second neural pattern began to present additional concerns, but, since emerging from the Nexus, my mind is clear and as Napi mentioned… the memories of Steve Trevor feel like a life I lived as if I were undercover, or dreams where I was someone else. It's a relief, and I find myself not entirely sure how to describe everything that occurred. The crew has been given a significantly truncated version of events. I'm not entirely sure how to explain to Diana that I am Steve, but I'm not. I don't think the crew necessarily needs that complication, either. I've told Bones I'll spend some time drafting supplemental logs to discuss the whole experience before it starts to fade._

 _With less relief and more trepidation, I must report that we have been unable to find any concrete evidence as to where the Romulan warbird came from and their intended mission in the Argelius system, nor how they received our command codes. In addition, if Apollo is on Argelius IV, we are unable to near the planet without our sensors miraculously going dark. Knowing that he directly had a hand in the evolution of the Argelians to the Delphines as they refer to themselves now lends to more questions than answers._

 _We hold the Prime Directive as our standard for non-interference, and as Admiral Pike was aware, I have a hard time standing by when cultures are destroyed. But, how can we hold a race with power beyond our understanding to the same Directive? How do we hold other races outside of the Federation?_

 _And if Apollo's only desire was to nurture a new civilization as their benevolent god… does it really hurt to gather a few laurel leaves?_

 _Without a clue to follow, I have heeded Commander Spock's recommendation and have resumed our course back to the Yorktown for refueling and repairs. In fact, I now have the time and mental clarity to review the dossiers of various new crewmembers, including the expected navigational officer._

 _Speaking of the crew, this experience has yet again proven to me that without my crew, I would not be the captain I am today. I have put in formal commendations for both Lieutenant Sulu and Commander Spock for their exemplary conduct since the Althean mission. But, I want the record to show that my entire crew has been the definition of grace under pressure in this last week, and their careers, each unique and independently driven, should be nurtured. As the captain, I have every intention of refocusing my time towards that goal._

 _I don't want them to feel that the best they ever had was the Enterprise. In truth, the Enterprise might be perfect for me, but I know she might not be for someone else. In fact, this experience has helped me recognize that while Ensign - excuse me, Lieutenant - Chekov was a valuable member of the crew and I would gladly have him back, I know he's making the Farragut a better ship because of his presence._

 _Each person on this ship deserves the opportunity to be their best. I hope the Enterprise gives them the chance to be even better._

 _Which includes our resident Ambassador, although I'm fairly certain she is dangerously close to perfect. In sending my report back to Starfleet, I also rescinded my request to have her transferred. As I did so, I received Admiral Kent's very stern rejection waiting for me._

 _At least that's one good thing about Federation bureaucracy. I wouldn't have been allowed to kick her off if I tried. Kent stopped me from making a mistake even worse._

 _But, that doesn't mean I'm off the hook. This experience has provided me a level of clarity on a personal level as well, and has reminded me that while I'm the captain, I'm still a person off the clock. Commodore Paris did an amazing job helping me figure that out. It's only fair I go the rest of the way on my own._

 _I can only hope Diana will hear me out. There's about twenty minutes left in this particularly strange day. I'm going to take the opportunity to get all of this out in the open now. Seems… auspicious, somehow. Very Greek._

 _With any luck, she will appreciate the gesture…_

* * *

With the ship running smoothly back towards the _Yorktown_ , the _Enterprise_ could handle the routine course back without its captain. It was just as well. While he was eager to get back to work, to enjoy routine for the rare occasion, he knew he had more important places to be than the bridge. Within the scant hours since they had been kicked out of the Argelian system, Jim had had plenty of time to mull over his conversation with his former self and the accompanying memories.

Jim knew it would take him weeks to figure out what exactly he now remembered about being Steve Trevor, but some things were already settling into his long term memory with the same fondness he had for his childhood. Others had the same bittersweet longing that he had when thinking of some of the women he'd loved and lost.

The memories of Diana felt like a fantasy, one he'd been too scared to indulge in. He knew why, but she deserved to hear it from him. If she would be gracious enough to listen. For him, it was more important to know that after all was said and done… he was Jim. He was Jim Kirk, and for a brief time, he'd been Steve Trevor. But, the uniform still fit right, the chair still called to him.

After a cursory check on the ship's system as to her location, Jim headed immediately from his office in his quarters to find her.

He was never more grateful that her Ambassador's quarters were only a deck away, because he was fairly certain his heart threatened to pound out of his chest. Jim could count on one hand the number of times he'd ever been _nervous_ around a woman, and he was fairly certain at least two of them were because of Diana. He could add four more instances if he counted things as Steve and…. Well, he needed to.

Diana could make him nervous just by looking at him. And he was going to try to explain himself, both past and present him.

What could possibly go wrong?

Jim barely had time to remind himself that whenever that thought crossed his mind, it most assuredly meant something would go wrong, before his finger touched the door chime. He'd been in her quarters before, but it had always been on-duty. All things being equal, he hoped that would not be the case here.

He tried to remind himself that it was certainly not the first time he'd confessed to a woman how he felt. In fact, Jim thought he was honestly an expert at it. He was just out of practice. And normally moved faster.

For a moment, his mind wandered to the inn in Veld, the way he'd fully intended to close the door behind him and leave Diana in peace. She had given him one look to pull him across the room, and he'd never regretted it. As Chief had promised, the whole memory was now recalled with the haze of nostalgia, of a love that had been cut short, like letters that never reached loved ones in the days of sea travel and land wars where mail was quick to burn or be misplaced on ships.

That _was_ him. Another time, another place, another life, but… so was Jim Kirk prior to his academy days.

The door slid open as Diana presumably unlocked it and Jim took an almost eager step in.

When he spotted her sitting on her couch, a cup tea in hand while she watched the stars distort in her window, that eagerness turned to concern. She wasn't smiling. If anything, she seemed… quietly in grief.

"Diana?" Jim's voice was soft, cautious. More than he normally was. When she turned to look at him, her eyes widened and she immediately set down the tea, as if to stand. _This isn't the right time._ He would have been better off waiting until they reached _Yorktown_ station and he could have bought her ice cream. "No, no, please, you don't have to get up. I just wanted to talk. But, if this isn't a good time, I can…" He motioned to the door behind him, already giving her a way out.

"No, please." She stood, even as he continued to backpedal. "You don't have to go. I was just thinking about… well, a number of things."

"You sure?" He asked.

"Yes." She replied, a hint of exasperation to her tone. "I wanted to talk to you as well." She had changed out of her armor into a deep red dress that hugged her figure and reminded him of a good vintage of cabernet. The kind of stuffy thing that Uhura loved and Bones bellyached over. The neckline was anything but stuffy. It scooped deeply, but not too far. Idly, he wondered if her lasso and belt were still on under the outfit, then reminded himself that he would have been able to tell. She wasn't leaving that much to the imagination that evening.

Jim never realized how much time he spent finding her mind and personality so attractive. He thought about her physical attributes and knew she was beautiful, but it almost felt odd that he was seeing her figure and admiring that. There was so much he didn't let himself do around her. _He was right. I was afraid. I didn't want things to turn out like Carol, and I didn't know how to do any of this without screwing it all up…_

"But, you came here with something on your mind, so…." She continued on, only for Jim to realize once he started talking about what was on his mind, he wouldn't stop.

Instead, he opted for the ever-casual Jim Kirk standard: "No, you first."

For a moment, Diana's eyes went wide and she was struck with the genuine surprise that Jim was so proud that he could occasionally get out of her. It was difficult to surprise her unless there was literally a spatial phenomenon she hadn't seen, but this seemed to do the trick. "I was… thinking about…" Diana turned to walk away, her hands at her sides, nervously tapping her thighs before she finally turned to face him. "About my family."

Jim's expression mirrored her own surprise. "Really? Is this because of Apollo?" He could still recall the way the god had helped him in the Nexus. He seemed so genuine. Jim just wished he would have listened about the warbird. Any goodwill Apollo had forged with him was certainly gone now.

"In part, yes." Diana said, seemingly relieved that there was no hint of skepticism or concern from Jim. Was she worried that he would have been as doubtful as he had been about Ares? _I'm you, but you don't have to be me._ Steve had said. Jim didn't have to play the skeptic here. He could leave that to Bones. "But, also of Athena. And my father."

"Zeus…" Jim made his way over towards her desk, leaning his hip against it as he watched her fidget. "I guess now it's my turn to remind you that you're not a woman easily rattled, and here you are ready to jump out of your skin. This really bothered you."

She nodded, but otherwise, Diana was silent for a long moment. She paced, uncrossing her arms, propping her hands on her hips and shaking her head as if she could simply will away her discomfort.

Jim pressed the subject as she paced to the far end of her quarters. "I know you said you revived them. Apollo seemed to be an ally of yours. A friend - "

"I would not call any of them friends!" Diana whirled, striding back towards him with concern and frustration plain on her face. "Never make that mistake, Jim! _Never!_ The gods are not our friends. They will play to their own agendas and never tell those involved, even their fellow… " She faltered as she slid a hand into her hair, trying to calm herself and force the next words into the air around them. "Fellow gods…" Her face screwed up as her thoughts kept rushing forth. "They left the Earth because of the war. Humanity had no need for gods, and because I wasn't there, I left them to squabble over their power and the worship they received simply from their historical significance. And now they have seeded more planets than I can possibly know, and I cannot stop them. I cannot shake the feeling that while you are here, there is still a sacrifice they will demand. They take and take and they never consider what it does to those they claim to love!"

She looked up at him. He had seen such a stricken look before. When she'd come from the gas cloud in Veld, and when she had fought Circe while he languished. His heart ached as she looked up at him, tears in her eyes. How long had she been holding these thoughts to herself?

"Is that what will become of me?" She continued. "Is that what faith does? Will I, too, be corrupted by the same lust that sent Ares after humanity and made my father depraved and distant? Will I abandon humanity as I have abandoned my people now - "

"Diana," Jim's hands reached for her instinctively, slipping up to the sides of her face so she would look at him. "Diana, listen to me, you are _nothing_ like the other gods. That's not who you are, and that's not who you'll become. Okay? It's just not you. And I know that because I saw it on the No Man's Land and I saw it when you rescued Vanessa. Don't let their actions distract you from your own."

"But, you haven't felt this. You don't know what it's like to feel that surge. It _is_ a drug, and I never realized..." She faltered again, not sure how to describe what she felt. But, he had a feeling he knew.

Jim shook his head again, running a thumb along her cheek. "Listen to me. You are not your father. You speak of yourself as the daughter of Hippolyta, not of Zeus. I have no reason to think that will change tomorrow. You told me that having Khan's blood doesn't make me him. The same rules apply for you."

Diana's eyes scanned his face, as if searching out the truth. Whatever it was she was looking for, she had found it. The edge of panic faded from her eyes before she finally blinked the last of it away. It was like watching her come out of her telepathic connection with Vanessa, when she had touched the Borg Collective.

The moment had passed. Jim pulled away first, suddenly aware of how quickly he'd gravitated towards her. He had a lot to tell her, and he couldn't get lost in the physical desire to be close _right now_.

Diana seemed to share the same need to distance herself. She exhaled slowly, taking a few steps back as she tried to collect her thoughts. "You're right…" She breathed, her tone more even now. "And I've told myself as much over the last few hours, but…" Diana sighed and slowly made a move back to her couch, sitting down almost dejectedly. "In this, I must establish my truth, my justice. And to do that is… hubris."

Jim softly smirked at that, crossing his arms over his chest to keep his hands to himself, to keep him anchored against the desk. "But, if you're a god, is it really hubris, though? After all, hubris is pride against the gods and since you're a god, it's going to be hard to be too proud against yourself."

Diana furrowed her brow at him, but it was clear that his joke had been enough to take the last of the edge off. At least he knew his charm was intact, back to his pre-mind scramble state. For a long moment, she didn't speak, but her eyes were on him. From the way she watched him, it was clear that she wanted to ask him something, but didn't know where to start. Finally, she settled on: "How are you feeling? You seem… steady."

He nodded. "I am. I feel good." He said, realizing that now that he had the floor. He still wasn't entirely sure he wanted it. "Bones has given me preliminary clearance to go back to work. I'm sure I owe him a few more check-ups before he'll back off, both officially and unofficially."

Diana smiled, reserved. "I'm relieved to hear that. You gave us all quite the scare."

Silence fell between the two of them for a moment. It was as if they had reset back to her first days on the _Enterprise_. She had pulled back, and now she was unsure how to return to their previous sense of closeness. But, really, it wasn't on her, was it? He knew he'd been harsh with her. And now that he understood how much of that was Steve's buried anger and resentment from his life as a soldier, he needed to make it up to her.

"That's actually what I wanted to talk to you about." Jim offered, pushing off of the desk as he spoke. "Well, that and…" He realized he was echoing her earlier words and chuckled. "A number of things."

"Of course." Diana said, although he couldn't tell if she was looking forward to any part of the conversation.

"Good. Because, I've had a rough week and I may have said a few things that I didn't mean. And a few things I did, but…" He considered his next words carefully. "Well, I'd like to just wipe the slate clean and say what I actually mean this time." Jim turned to face her fully, slowly putting his arms to his sides. If he was going to do this, he wouldn't do it looking like some overly casual, arrogant, devil-may-care captain. If he'd had time, he would have changed out of the uniform, too.

"You know you don't have to apologize for wanting me to leave the ship." She said, trying to cut him off at the pass. "I told you, you had every right to feel that I had not been forthcoming with you - "

"Please, Diana, just let me get this out." Jim interrupted before she could go any further. She'd had plenty of time to beat herself up, and he wasn't about to make it worse.

She simply closed her mouth and nodded, allowing him the opportunity to continue.

"The truth is, I was hurt. And I have a great habit of pushing people I care about away because I lash out. You can ask Bones. I've had my fair share of idiotic benders and stupid remarks because I got it into my head that I was better off without people. Hell, I did it with Chekov after the Augmenters took the ship. Bones had to knock me down a couple of pegs for it." Jim rubbed his eyes a bit, as if the words would somehow come out _better_ that way. "Having all of my memories as Steve dropped into my head didn't feel like memories. They felt like vivid, honest moments where I would snap back to the past. And… I didn't realize how much anger that life had. To be a spy in that war, to see the things I did, it messes with you. But, the truth is that I have never wanted you anywhere except right there with me on the bridge of the _Enterprise._ For as long as you'll have her, and have me, you have a home with us." He paused, lifting his gaze enough to gauge her reaction.

She was watching him intently, actively listening with her brow knit in either concentration or slight confusion. "You said 'I'. And you mentioned the No Man's Land. What are you trying to tell me?"

"I mean that I'm…" Jim chuckled. He knew how to _feel_ what he wanted to tell her, but… he still wasn't sure how to voice it. "I met Steve in the Nexus. We talked. And I'm… meant to be him. And now that I've left the Nexus, it's all fitting together now. I was Steve. I can feel those memories like they're mine, but, in the far past." As he continued to speaking about it, he could feel like the right words were on the tip of his tongue. Almost eagerly, he moved over to the couch to take a seat beside Diana, as stunned as she seemed. "I look back on it the same way you probably look back at those times. It was you, but you've grown. And that's how this feels. I don't think of Steve as… this foreign entity. It's more like he was me when I was undercover, or before I went to Starfleet."

"I… I'm not sure I understand…" Diana breathed.

"I remember being Steve. I don't think I'll get to hang onto those memories forever, I'm sure they'll fade. But, it doesn't feel invasive anymore." He took a deep breath, trying his best to think of a way he could help her understand. "I never told you how my father died." He said, glancing over at her. "He was killed the day I was born. By a Romulan ship. He just had the misfortune of being there. So, I never got to know my dad. And now, I…" Jim thought back for a moment, his smile a bit more fond than eager. "I have memories of growing up with a dad. And they're faint, but… it's more than I ever had." Shrugging, he leaned back a bit. "It's almost like the memories are filling in gaps I didn't know I had. I remember what it was like to watch you try ice cream for the first time." Jim chuckled. "I even remember Charlie singing for hours because you got him started, but it's all faded. A bit like I woke up from a dream."

She was searching his face once more, eyes darting from each feature, but she seemed to be looking for something different now. "I thought that wasn't possible…"

"The way Steve told it, it normally isn't. But, people learn of their past lives and it feels much like this" He realized that by confessing this much, he was giving away how much time he'd spent preparing for this conversation, but it was worth it. "It's not uncommon to have memories of a past life that just… feel like you. It plays out with most of what I've read about past life regression, even if I didn't take any stock in it. But, once Napi said that, it made sense - "

"Did you just say you spoke with Napi?" She shook her head slowly, as if in awe. "He disappeared so long ago, I thought he had finally died."

"He was in the Nexus, and he wasn't a ghost. He was my guide." Jim smiled. "I wish I'd known he was a god in Belgium. That would have made a lot of sense." Before he could get too far off-subject, Jim leaned back some in the seat, trying to refocus. "The point is… he helped me understand the burden that you had to carry. I didn't really understand how difficult things would be for you to talk about Steve, or Etta, or any of them until I found myself in the Nexus and I was faced with the same truth that Steve was when he arrived." Without thinking, Jim reached out to rest his hand on hers. "Sometimes, it's easier to just let those ghosts rest. And I saw how happy they were. Sammy still serves drinks and Charlie plays piano. And I… when I was Steve, I knew I'd be waiting a long time for you to ever come to the Nexus. So… Steve asked for another chance to be with you. And then along comes me." He gave her a moment to let all of that process before continuing. "I'm who Steve wanted to be for you. If I'm alive, if I'm here, then he's here. It's a bit like meeting a parallel version of myself." He idly thought of Spock's time with Ambassador Spock. He would have to remember to thank his best friend for his logical assessment of his dual identity. "And that parallel version of myself still existed, but I don't have to make the same decisions. Or the same mistakes."

Diana quirked an eyebrow, momentarily thrown. "Mistakes?"

"You didn't even know you were a goddess then, but I know that now. And I'm not going to make the mistake of doubting you when you need me." Jim shrugged a bit. "Just seems silly after all these temporal anomalies, witch goddesses and your _brother_. Makes for a helluva captain's log, though..."

He found himself trailing off as Diana brought her hand up to his cheek, fingers ghosting along his jawline in a gesture that felt all too familiar and yet entirely new. His fears that Steve's memories of intimacy with Diana would color any new touch disappeared in that moment. "You were Steve…" She breathed, then with a little smile. "But, _are_ Jim. Guinan was right."

"She was?" He asked as her fingers kept caressing, drawing him nearer.

"My heart was fulfilling Steve's wishes, because it was pulling me towards you." She slipped her hand around the back of his neck.

Jim's free hand slipped up to her cheek as he steeled himself. "I love you." He said, honest and honestly scared. "And even if you don't know how you feel, I will always respect that. But, you are a force of nature, and a goddess. I don't mean that as hyperbole, Diana, I have never trusted someone the way I trust you, and from the moment I met you, I knew I was looking at someone who would leave me in awe. And you do. So, no matter how you decide to handle this, I just wanted you to know..."

Whatever he was going to say next, which admittedly, he knew probably was just more rambling and nothing incredibly poetic, disappeared as her fingers ghosted over his lips for just a moment before she pulled him close.

When their lips meant, there was no hesitation on either side. Diana knew precisely what she wanted, how she wanted to explore the terrain that to her was probably familiar in the same way those back roads in Iowa were for Jim. Jim, on the other hand, felt like he had fallen headlong into uncharted space, and he wanted to explore every single texture and touch that he could be allowed.

His hand left hers so he could loop his arm around her waist and draw her nearer. His thumb idly caressed her cheek. He felt her fingers rake along the base of his scalp, then slip through his hair in a way that felt profoundly comforting and also profoundly sensual.

And then his _damned communicator chirped._

Jim groaned unhappily against her lips, honestly ready to jettison it out an airlock, but when it kept chirping, he knew it had to be important.

Diana, to her credit, chuckled and shook her head as he tried to pull away. When he began to reach for it in his pocket, their lips parted enough for her to breathe, "If I ask you, will you ignore it?"

He paused in mid-motion, his hand in his pocket but the communicator still in place. His eyebrows lifted almost comically as Diana's mouth brushed against his jawline. "Absolutely." He breathed, betraying precisely how quickly his heart was pounding. "But, if the warp core blows up, I don't want to have to answer for that."

As the device kept chirping, she finally conceded, albeit grudgingly. "If you must."

Jim slowly pulled the communicator free, but not before kissing her cheek. "Captain's duty. Hopefully, it's nothing." He flipped the communicator open after a moment. "Kirk here."

" _Dammit, Jim, why is it when I tell you to rest, you're doing the exact opposite?"_ Bones. He had a feeling he knew exactly why the medical officer thought he wasn't sleeping, but he tried his best to play it off anyway.

Jim winked at Diana as he said casually, "How do you know I'm doing the exact opposite? I _am_ relaxing right now."

" _Because I'm outside your quarters with the sedatives I've prescribed but no Jim Kik to administer them to. If you don't get back here in the next twenty minutes, I'll get that green-blooded ingrate involved._ "

Sighing, Jim dropped his head, resigned to his fate. "I'll be there, I'll be there. Just… take it easy, Bones, or your blood pressure will spike. Kirk out." He said, slapping the communicator shut.

As if Diana knew precisely what he was thinking, she tapped his leg to make him look up at her and then pointed to the communicator. "Now you know why I ignore those."

Jim chuckled, shaking his head at her. "You really shouldn't tell me that. I'll think you're ignoring me next time you're off fighting a god." He recalled what she'd been doing on the planet with giddy awe. "Or a _warbird_. How did you even do that?"

Diana leaned back, crossing her arms over her chest. "It will have to wait for another time. You already told Leonard you would be returning to your quarters to sleep." Jim's grin faded as he realized she was not going to be party to any sort of distraction for him. "Go rest."

Sighing, Jim finally nodded and pulled himself to his feet. "Understood, Ambassador." Jim had perfected flirting while sounding completely professional years ago, so he was more than happy to put that skill to use. "I will put a pin in this, but I trust we'll find time for a follow-up discussion."

Diana laughed, then motioned to the door. "Yes, but you need to sleep. I nearly lost you, I have no desire to find out you made yourself worse because of me."

As Jim made it to the door, he turned to face her. He paused and braced himself on the doorframe for one last parting shot. "I can guarantee, Diana, that you make me better. Every time." The slight flush on her cheeks reminded him in that perfectly nostalgic way of their dancing in Veld. "Have a good night, Diana."

"Good night, Jim." She replied, seeming more at ease than he could recall ever seeing her.

With all the effort he could muster, he pulled away and walked out the door back towards the turbolift.

Bones was right. He needed to sleep. Normally, his mind would have been racing with thoughts of the Romulans, of the concern of another Starfleet intelligence crisis, or even of how to deal with the gods and monsters they'd faced.

But, tonight, his mind was at ease. He strained to keep that memory of dancing in Veld in his tired memory, humming "I'll Walk Beside You" all the way to his quarters.

He knew that he still had questions, concerns and worries about Diana, about any possibility of a relationship.

He also knew that after a good night's sleep, he was sure that would not stop James T. Kirk from finding a way through it.

They had nothing but time.


	31. Liar, Murderer, Smuggler: Teaser

**Liar, Murderer, Smuggler: Teaser**

Commodore Paris's office had arguably the best view of the central plaza on the _Yorktown._ From this vantage point, Jim watched people below as they went from one location to another. It was hard to believe that a year ago, the starbase had nearly destroyed, and just a few months ago, Jim had been in this very same office wondering if he'd ever get a chance to fly the new _Enterprise_ or if she'd be languishing in construction forever.

"My apologies if I kept you waiting, Captain Kirk." Commodore Paris sounded, as always, placid and soothing, even as she came into her own office late for their meeting.

"No apology necessary, Commodore." Jim said, flashing her a polite smile as he turned away from the bay window. "I know I wasn't exactly in your agenda for the foreseeable future, but I appreciate you taking the time to see me."

The Commodore smiled in return as she made her way over to him, taking his outstretched hand for a quick handshake before she headed to her desk. "Your report regarding the Romulan warbird and the… " From the way her head gently tilted from side to side while she took a seat suggested she was trying to recall Jim's own words. "... 'God-like entity Apollo' has made quite the wave at Starfleet Command and the Federation at large. I know you and Ambassador Prince expected to meet with Admiral Kent, but he's been recalled back to San Francisco to deal with the crisis."

Jim hadn't heard precisely why Conner had been recalled, but he assumed the admiral had plenty of reasons. He also had suspected that the Romulan warbird's presence so far from the Neutral Zone would have had political repercussions, but he tried not to think too much about those sorts of things. He was much happier to just get the job done and go back to exploring.

"It's just their typical saber-rattling, isn't it?" He asked, almost off-handedly. "They were the ones far out of their territory. And they weren't destroyed by us, but by a neutral sovereign entity. They can't be holding us responsible for that." He didn't envy Admiral Kent if that was the atmosphere he was walking into. For a brief moment, he was vividly reminded of several instances where he'd had to slip into raucous War Council meetings in London. Those might have been hazy memories, but he had a feeling the same feeling of nearly comical dread applied to Kent walking into the Federation council room.

"They will try to, which is why the Admiral returned and took your report with him." She leaned back in her chair, motioning for Jim to take a seat across from her. He only obliged her when she made it clear she wasn't going to talk up to him. _Commodore's prerogative_ , he thought as he did so. "You've been on quite the adventure. I'm pleased that Doctor McCoy has given you medical clearance, but I admit this tale of… dueling neural patterns and temporal anomalies will most assuredly keep the Science Division busy for decades."

Jim cracked a more amused smile. "Well, you know me. I don't do things by half-measures. I just hope I haven't made things more tense with the Romulan Empire." Jim's stomach turned a little sourly. With the last four days spent repairing the ship, working with Bones and Spock and filing reports, he'd had very little time to speak with Diana and he was still trying to sort through the way his time as Steve colored his life.

Romulans were the reason he'd lost his father. The memories of Ulysses Trevor were a balm on that wound, but nothing could ever really make it heal. He didn't want a war, but he wasn't entirely too keen on watching the Federation supplicate themselves for peace. He had hoped they could find something in the middle.

"The Romulans will do what they have always done. They will find new ways to continue the conflict that they have sought, and we will find ways to stop them." Commodore Paris was so calm and off the cuff, it was easy to see why she'd been career Starfleet. It was very clear that she enjoyed the guidance aspect of leadership. He hoped he could be that kind of influence for his crew.

"Well, as you know, if you need me or my crew, you have us for anything."

She smiled a bit, regarding him for a long moment before she finally spoke. "What can I do for you, Captain? As much as I have enjoyed our talks, and in fact, I've missed having you come by to ask me how your ship is doing, I know this wasn't just a social call."

Jim chuckled and leaned forward a bit in his chair. She was definitely one of the few authority figures he felt any sense of friendship with since Chris had died. And he appreciated that she was more than comfortable stating the same before moving right back to business as usual. "You're right, it's not. I was actually going to ask the Admiral if he had any news on my new crewmembers."

"Oh? Is there something particular you need?" The Commodore asked, interest piqued.

"As I'm sure you're aware, I'm still down a navigator for my primary bridge crew and a number of engineers. I know a few of them were about to graduate, but, I was especially looking forward to my navigator. She's always been set for my ship. I was expecting to receive the transfer orders by now. "

The Commodore's smile slowly faded as she considered the request. "That's strange. I received word from the Academy weeks ago that this year's graduates were already assigned and shipping out. Do you have the dossiers? I'll reach out to my contacts and let you know what I find."

Jim tapped a few buttons on his arm data padd unit, watching the display change as it transferred his crew dossiers to the Commodore's terminal. "Done. I appreciate anything you can do."

"Of course, captain. Is there anything else?" She smiled. "I hate to rush you out, but I still have a meeting with the Council to keep."

Jim stood as she did, hands at his side, giving her his full attention. "No, ma'am, that's all. Thank you for your time, and I'll let you get back to it." With a curt nod, he turned on his heel to leave.

He made it about halfway to the door before she stopped him. "One last thing, Jim." He paused as she dropped rank. The Commodore almost _never_ did that. He had a feeling he knew what was coming. "How are things with the Ambassador? I understand the second neural pattern was close to her. Your logs made it sound as if things might be tense."

His expression shifted to warm amusement as he turned back to her for a moment. "Ambassador Prince is a dream to have on board, Commodore. I can assure you I will do nothing to jeopardize her presence. In fact, I promised I would catch up with her after our meeting."

The Commodore's eyebrow quirked as she barely contained her mirth. "Well, then, I won't keep you. But, my comm line and my door are always open to you."

"I know." He said. "Thank you again."

This time, she didn't stop him as he made his way out the door and down the turbolift.

When he reached the main street outside the Starfleet Command building, he found Diana exactly where he'd asked to meet her, but she hardly seemed aware of him. Whatever was on her mind had left her deep in thought and she hadn't noticed him leave the building. To be fair, they hadn't had a chance to really talk since he'd last seen her, partly from medical orders to rest.

Jim took the opportunity to (for once) sneak up on the ever-present Amazon…

Only to have her turn around to face him, clearly aware he'd been making his way to her, annoyed and pointing to her communicator.

"What is the point of such devices if even after two hundred years, you still cannot reach the person you need to?" She lamented.

Jim frowned a bit, sympathetic. "Admiral Hackett's not returning your hails?" He asked. He was trying desperately not to be perturbed that an admiral across the Alpha Quadrant was giving Diana the runaround. It wouldn't help him to push his luck with the Commodore. Not yet, anyway.

"No, and it's been weeks since he sent me a report on Vanessa." The two of them had barely spoken the last week. After his confession - for lack of a better word - and their subsequent moment of intimacy, he had been thrown into ship business and she had taken the time to reach out to Hackett. Apparently, she'd been so focused on him that she'd just assumed everything was running smoothly until the Admiral didn't send her a follow-up as he'd promised. "Something is wrong. I can feel it. I just don't know what _it_ is."

Now that Jim had the benefit of remembering Diana in her youth, he found it highly amusing that she was still just as impatient with the unnecessary red tape of bureaucracy. But, he was smart enough not to say anything to that effect. Instead, Jim reached over and gently took her by the elbow with one hand and took her communicator with the other, clapping it closed. He deftly began to steer them towards a side street.

"I'm sure the Admiral just hasn't had a chance to reach out, or doesn't want to report anything that isn't substantial." He said, only handing her the communicator when she shot him a slightly annoyed look that suggested she'd put it away. "For now, we have a few days here on _Yorktown_ while I find out about my crew. I have a few more favors with the Commodore, but you don't need to rush."

Diana glanced over at him. "You are bordering on patronizing."

"I'm not trying to be. I'm trying to be pragmatic." He said with a rakish grin. "A skill that utterly mystifies Bones and unsettles Spock, because he said I'm not suited to it."

"He might have a point," She fired back, although he'd managed to pull a smile out of her with that. "You are not what I would consider sensible."

"Well, I'm lucky I have you here to deal with my 'complex personality.'" He quipped, never more thrilled to have an entirely new sense of familiarity with Diana that he could use to jibe and tease her to his heart's content. At his core, Jim preferred to be the playful, boundless wit that he'd been in the Academy. It had mellowed over the years, but Diana did a masterful job of making him want to go back to it. She looked a bit stunned. Not the reaction he'd been going for, but he didn't let it stop him. "Now, I believe I still owe you ice cream, and that shop isn't too far - "

"Cap'n!" Scotty's voice seemed to come out of nowhere. A quick glance around from the duo revealed that he was behind them, sprinting at breakneck speed. "Captain!" He wheezed as he finally skidded to a halt in front of them, doubled over and panting.

"Scotty, what's wrong?" Jim immediately reached over to help him stand straight, but his eyes were back towards the docking bay. His first thought was that something was wrong with his ship. "Did something happen during repairs?" He thought through the trajectory of where Scotty had come from and realized that didn't play out. "Wait a minute, where were you? I thought you were getting a drink with Bones - "

"We've got…" Scotty wheezed, then coughed so hard from gasping for air that he sounded like he might vomit. "Got to help her… I dinnae… dinnae know how…" Immediately, Diana was at his side, rubbing his back and reminding him to _breathe_.

"Help who, Mister Scott?" Jim hoped throwing a bit of formality at his Chief Engineer would calm him down.

It seemed to do just that. Scotty stood straight, then nodded at Diana when he was finally able to breathe before he turned to his captain.

"I just got the call… I'm her emergency contact." Scotty seemed utterly stricken. "Och, the lass is missin'! They tried to reach me weeks ago but I must have missed it after Althea!"

"Who are you talking about, Scotty?" Diana asked, thoroughly confused. "Who is missing?"

Unfortunately, Jim knew exactly who he was referring to. And now, he understood why he'd never received her transfer orders.

His navigator. their friend, was in trouble.

"Jaylah." Both engineer and captain replied.

He had hoped to keep her arrival on the _Enterprise_ a surprise for his engineer, but judging by Scotty's reaction, there was a good chance she wouldn't make it to the ship at all.


	32. Liar, Murderer, Smuggler: Act I

**Liar, Murderer, Smuggler: Act I**

The entire senior crew had assembled in the briefing room. If it hadn't been for the fact that Scotty simply was too upset to take a seat, Diana most likely would have been the one standing in the corner of the room. Instead, the Chief engineer paced in tight, quiet circles as he tried to keep his distress in check.

It seemed as though every time the _Enterprise_ crew thought that they could take a breath, something else cropped up. While she hadn't met the woman, Jaylah apparently held a special place in the crew's hearts, but most especially with Mister Scott. Since the incident on Althea, he had been much cooler towards her. She had a feeling that had to do with the danger that Jim had been in, but he had never outright told her. But, nevertheless, she was concerned. Diana could feel the worry coming off of him in waves, and it pained her that she could not do more to help ease him.

The crew assembled, Diana watched as the captain stood and brought up a display of very fine print text before he spoke. It became quite clear that he was reviewing the text for any details he might have missed, but that he must have already known the bulk of the information.

"Jaylah was scheduled to graduate from Starfleet Academy on Stardate 2264.52, nearly three weeks after we last docked with _Yorktown._ " His voice was even, every bit Captain Kirk and every bit presenting the most calming, confident presence he could for his crew. It was a trait that, in hindsight, she now realized should have been another hint that Steve and Jim were similar for a reason. Not that she had really had time to process what that would mean. Without spending more time with Jim off-duty, she still wasn't sure how they would proceed. She knew the truth of how she felt about Jim, but she wasn't sure she could act on it. And with this crisis, there was no sign that they would resolve that any time soon. "She received her official posting, but never arrived for the ceremony. As a result, the Academy filed a missing persons report when she didn't turn up in her rooms a few days later."

"Well, it's not like she'd be the first cadet to sleep through graduation," Doctor McCoy remarked, but from the way he was frowning, she got the impression he was using it to cope with his own concern. "Doesn't seem very like her, though. Girl seemed pretty excited to go to the Academy."

"And I'd like to think she would have been excited to know she was scheduled to come to the _Enterprise._ " Jim said in agreement, looking through the display one more time before looking back up at the staff. "The Academy officially has no idea where she is. However, the fact that she received a posting but I never received transfer orders suggests that someone intercepted the communique. Otherwise, I would have received those _and_ the subsequent withdrawal when she didn't formally accept."

"Now, hang on a minute," Scotty had stopped pacing, the timbre of his voice deeper and with even more of a brogue than normal. "Ye're telling me Starfleet knew they had a cadet bail on a posting to the fleet's flagship, then someone in Starfleet made sure ye didn't know she'd gone missing?"

"That would certainly be indicative of foul play." Spock said, voicing what they all were thinking.

Jim scrolled through the text before him, but again, Diana had the distinct impression that he was looking for details. He already knew the broad strokes. "A few days ago, the _Republic_ was on its way back from Coridan when they intercepted an Orion pirate vessel, as well as what was left of a slave ship. Jaylah's communicator transponder, along with an academy uniform that had been badly damaged, were found in the wreckage of that slave ship. Now, according to the _Republic's_ chief science officer, the wreckage was at least a week old and there was nothing to suggest how the uniform got there."

Uhura was aghast and visibly shaken. "You're saying the Orion Syndicate has her."

"He's sayin' it's a definite possibility." Scotty replied, balling a hand into his fist. "The thievin', sick bastards, in a week they could have sold her already! She could be dead, Jim - "

The captain held a hand up to silence him. "I'm not saying that, Scotty. But, there's a lot here that's not adding up." Jim surveyed his team's reactions as he continued with his suspicions. "A cadet goes missing after getting posted to the fleet flagship and no one questions it? Then, when her belongings are found halfway across the quadrant, it doesn't even hit a security alert."

"Combine that with the fact that a Romulan warbird had our bloody command codes, and ye've got the start of another Section 31." The name was unfamiliar to Diana, but the way that the rest of the staff bristled at it gave her pause. It told her the situation could quickly become dire.

Jim leaned forward, bracing his hands on the table before he spoke again. "I don't want to jump to conclusions, so bear in mind that we have a lot of questions and no answers." He pointed at the table, as if to refocus the group. "But, if it hadn't been for you, Scotty, we wouldn't have known she was missing at all. So, whoever's responsible for this got sloppy."

"Och, I didn't do nothin'." Scotty huffed. "I was sent a standard automated transmission that got caught in a subspace relay until we got close enough to it. If I'd just checked in with her more..."

Diana sat up a bit. The captain looked like he was about to speak, but when she caught his eye, he held back while she turned to Scotty. "Why _did_ you receive the message? I understand that she is a former ally, based on how all of you react to her, but why are you her emergency contact? As opposed to the captain or… or her family." It was both a question out of personal curiosity, but also one of diplomatic need. Something told her that if this woman had befriended the chief engineer and been assigned to the _Enterprise_ , she was quite brilliant. Oftentimes, brilliant people became targets.

"Ah." Scotty's frown vanished for a moment as an expression closer to bashfulness replaced his concern. "Well, Jaylah's got no family 'cept us. We found her after her parents had been killed. She saved us, but, I, ehm, I may have gotten close with her. We kept in touch when she went to the Academy. I suppose she just thought if she had someone to go to in an emergency, it'd be me."

"I see." Diana was touched by his clear affection for her. It made wanting to find her all the more important. "Then, perhaps you have insight we don't. Maybe she was working on something while at the Academy, something that could have distracted her, or caught the attention of someone who would wish to do her harm."

"If it is indeed a case of a Starfleet security breach, perhaps she mentioned individuals you were unfamiliar with or did not behave appropriately, Mister Scott."

Scotty went ashen as the thought clearly crossed his mind. "I… I dinnae. She did send a message that she was meetin' with some admirals, and I'd never heard of them before. But, ye don't exactly meet admirals when you're a cadet unless ye've done something exceptional or something terrible. It was about the holo-emitters she'd developed, the way they worked behaviorally. She wasn't exactly specific."

"Then, I have to assume that there's foul play involved, and i just called in all my favors with Commodore Paris to get this far." DIana could tell Jim was holding something back. But, what? And why? "Now, we don't know much about the Orion Syndicate, but we do know their slave trade is incredibly lucrative and any alien female would be seen as an exotic prize." There was something in the way Jim specified gender that made Diana's stomach turn and her temper slowly begin to rise. "I've asked crewman Savi to come to the briefing room, and she should be here any minute. But, if we expect to do anything about this, we need need to know our enemy."

"They use the name of the great hunter, yet they trade in slaves." Diana finally spoke. It wasn't intentional that the crew talked around her, but there were hundreds of species in and out of the Federation. This was not one she had studied in depth. She only knew that they ran illegal dilithium mining operations, hence why they were referred to as pirates. "Surely, that must be against the Federation's charter."

"It is." Jim replied. "But, they're not part of the Federation. The Orion Syndicate runs out of its own set of colonies in the Beta Quadrant, and their pirate ships span most of Federation territory. When we run into them, we absolutely detain them if we suspect they're doing something illegal, but we're not a military organization. We don't make it a habit of assuming the worst of people." Jim pushed off of the table and stood straight once more.

"Then why hasn't Starfleet sent a ship before now?" Sulu asked beside her. The helmsman had been quietly considering the situation with the others.

Jim sighed, his eye meeting Diana's for just a moment before he looked down at the table. "I have no earthly idea."

 _He's lying._ She had caught that subtlety with him months ago, and now she was sure there was a reason her stomach was swimming. He knew why they wouldn't send a ship, but he didn't feel comfortable telling the crew.

"But, I do know that we're going to get her back. I've spoken with Commodore Paris, and we believe that a small undercover operation would be able to extract Jaylah from the slave operations."

"Then, I will go with you." Diana said, staring the captain down for a moment. She had a feeling the more she learned, the more righteously angry she would become with this Orion Pirate Syndicate, but first, she had to make sure Jim knew she would not be taking no for an answer.

"Thank you, Diana, that's what I was hoping you would say. Because, based on the ship wreckage, the _Republic_ had a fairly good idea where that ship was going." Jim brought up a star chart on the table's display. After a moment, a projected course of the ship started to dot across the map. "The Borderland."

"Oh my good lord…" Scotty muttered behind Diana. "The Verex III outpost. Admiral Archer said he nearly lost almost a dozen of his crew back on the NX-01. I remember him teaching that lecture at the Academy." The Scotsman seemed chilled. His jaw was set, and it was closest she'd ever seen to him looking… haunted. "We've got to save her. If they sell her to a Klingon, she'll disappear into the Empire and we'll never find her." When Scotty turned to face Jim, his eyes were glossy with unshed tears as he considered Jaylah's fate. "Jim, ye've got to do something and fast. Let me go with you."

Jim shook his head. "Absolutely not, Scotty. I need you here on the _Enterprise_ , and you aren't exactly accustomed to undercover work."

"Then I'll go." Uhura said, almost as if to dare Jim to tell her no.

Before he could say one way or the other, Sulu rose his hand. "Me, too. You need combat experience."

Jim immediately shook his head, waving them both off. "No, no, I appreciate that, but when I meant small, I actually meant… miniscule." He said without much flare. "The fact is, I don't need a communications expert because Orions primarily speak standard, and I don't need additional combat experience if I have Diana with me."

"With you?" McCoy echoed, his eyebrows shooting up almost to his hairline. "You just got back from one near death experience and now you want to go on another one?" The doctor shook his head, scowling. "Typical."

"It'll be fine, Bones." Jim said, attempting to placate his surly best friend. "Diana can take care of the both of us, believe me." When Spock quirked an eyebrow, clearly ready to add his color, Jim shook his head. "No. Decision's made. Diana agrees to go, so the two of us will go. What I need from everyone else is to prepare. We need an extraction plan, in case something does go wrong. Diana and I will need a ship, currency to trade with - maybe the confiscated latinum we logged from the Ferengi cruiser a few months back - and Bones, I need you to figure out a way to make Diana look like one of them. Less... distracting."

Diana glanced down at her Federation attire, then back up at him. "I can blend in."

"He ain't talkin' about your clothes, sweetheart. Your complexion's a little pink for them." Leonard said, still clearly not thrilled by the proposition. Diana wasn't entirely sure what that meant, but she simply furrowed her brow in confusion and held back on satisfying her curiosity. She had no intention of leaving the briefing room until she could speak to Jim in private and find out what he was hiding from the crew.

The doors to the briefing room opened with a whoosh as a science officer Diana recognized stepped into the room. The remarks from the doctor made much more sense. The green-skinned, red-haired Orion woman was part of the botany team, and if Diana remembered correctly, she had had… a rocky friendship with Pavel before he left the ship. "Captain, Commander." She nodded to the two most senior officers, clearly a bit rattled by the sudden call before the senior staff. "You wanted to see me?"

"Yes, just a moment." Diana glanced around the room, then caught the fond expression on Jim's face before he motioned to the rest of the staff. "You have your orders. I will check in with each of you shortly, and Bones, I'll send Diana to sickbay right after we're done here. Lieutenant Uhura, if you could stay behind along with the ambassador, please. You listened to your roommate more than I did… Galiana?"

Uhura bristled. "Galia."

Jim winked at her. "See, exactly." The brief smile he gave her indicated there was a joke Diana was missing. The captain turned his attention to the others. "Dismissed."

Diana rose with the others, but her intent was not to leave. Instead, she moved to Mister Scott, drawing his attention. "Scotty, I promise we will find her. However, I'd like to know more about Jaylah before we leave."

Scotty nodded, still quite distraught. He opened his mouth to speak, but had to clear his throat when nothing came out. Finally, he managed, "Of course. You need anythin', just let me know."

Diana gently touched his shoulder, a moment of comfort before he finally left the briefing room.

Once the chief engineer left, it was just Uhura, herself, crewman Savi and Jim.

"Crewman, please have a seat. The Ambassador and I have a few questions to ask you about your time on the Orion colonies." The dynamic in the room changed significantly. Jim's tone, his body language, had suddenly shifted from the open, but somewhat authoritative captain to that of a friend. And most importantly, it didn't escape her notice that he had made a point to mention that Diana wanted to know answers to his questions.

For a brief moment, Diana found herself reminded of another time and another place. Paris, helping the French authorities shut down an underground prostitution ring. There was a way that other women banded together, even if they had male partners, to comfort and soothe the survivor of whatever abuse had been perpetuated.

 _He wants her to feel safe…_ Diana realized as she made her way back over and slowly took a seat. Even though she was careful to keep her godly abilities to herself, she could still sense the trepidation from the younger woman. "Hello. I don't believe we've formally met." Diana held her hand out to the woman. "I am Ambassador Diana Prince. The captain and I believe you can help us find someone." It had been easy to slip into the assumed role of partners, as if she and JIm had discussed it previously and not only decided on the task five minutes before.

Unfortunately, she wasn't entirely sure what Savi needed to feel safe from, but given what they had heard thus far, it was enough to make her uneasy.

"Of course, anything I can do to help." Savi shook Diana's hand, then immediately put her hands back in her lap as she looked around. "I just… don't know what I can do." The way the group had settled, Uhura was on one side of Savi, Diana on the other. She noticed that Jim had significantly distanced himself to nearly the opposite end of the briefing room.

"The survivor we picked up on Altamid, Jaylah." That was Nyota, gently easing Savi into the facts of the situation. "We think she may have been taken by an Orion pirate ship and is on her way to be sold to auction."

Savi's expression immediately went from nervous to stricken. She wore her heart on her sleeve. "No, oh… oh, _no…_ "

"We were hoping you could tell us what you can about your time within the Syndicate, Savi." Jim said from his position behind them. Diana didn't spare a glance back at him, but his voice suggested he was trying to be as soothing and gentle as possible. "I know it's not polite to ask, but, the ambassador and I need as much detail as possible to be able to blend in."

"You want to know about when I was a slave…" Savi said, looking up at the captain with wide eyes that spoke of deeper pain and terror than Diana would have thought of such a young woman. "I was young, I-I might not remember anything to help - " She was terrified. She had been ambushed.

Diana leaned forward, slipping the girl's hand into hers. She would discuss Jim's recklessness afterwards. For a man who clearly felt so deeply and wanted to help so many, he had allowed his personal feelings to cloud him from this: simple, raw fear of victimhood. She couldn't decide if that was a slight influence from his newfound clarity regarding Steve. Steve made decisions without much discussion, and it often meant moments like these. "You do not need to do this, sister. If it truly upsets you, I will not force you to face those demons."

Savi squeezed Diana's hand in response, and finally turned her attention from the captain back to her. When their eyes met, Savi seemed to steel herself. Diana hoped she found courage through the simple gesture. "No… it's fine. I'll tell you. That's why I came to the Federation. To escape, so that other people would know and wouldn't go through it. I don't want to see Jaylah hurt, and I don't think she'd be able to handle how it is there. The auctions, the slavers…" The way her eyes flicked to the captain suggested more than he probably wanted to hear, but it was enough for Diana.

Diana turned back to the captain. "Jim, can you leave us with her, please? I can find you before I head to Sickbay, but I think this would be best done…" She glanced from him to Uhura, then back. "With a smaller group."

For a moment, she thought he might argue, as he looked both perplexed and annoyed that he was being pushed out of his own briefing. She tilted her head, non-verbally reminding him that his track record with winning arguments against her was still not in his favor.

So, he nodded and cleared his throat. "Of course. Take all the time you need."

Once the captain had left, Savi's demeanor didn't change much, but Diana could tell that she was less scared than before when she started to speak.

"I suppose the first thing to understand is that… you can be a slave as young as 14 years. You're called a _lodubyal_ , and your slave contracts are for 21 years." Savi's words spilled from her lips as if Dionysus himself had loosed her inhibitions with wine. "After that, you can retire or become a madam where you train others. That was my mother. She had only started as a madam, so we went from outpost to outpost a lot. It was… difficult to know where we would be. One time, we got separated on the auction floor and I nearly ended up in the pens. She snuck me out when I was 13, because she was afraid I'd end up like her…"

Over the course of the next hour, Diana heard every gritty detail of the Orion slave trade. The way women were sold for everything from sexual pleasure to menial drudgery. How ships from various cultures were raided so that any crewmember could be sold, male or female, child or adult. She had to listen to Savi describe how one of her older sisters was deemed too difficult to sell and had been... cannibalized by other traders. Her stomach swam as Savi recounted the depravities of this mysterious pestilence right under the Federation's noses.

When the young crewman was through, Diana was shaken and filled with a righteous fury that would only be quenched with justice for not only Jaylah, but this girl as well.

And she desperately needed to see Jim.

* * *

As promised, Diana found the captain as soon as she was done speaking with Uhura and Savi. He had gone to his quarters, presumably to file some sort of report.

Unfortunately for him, meeting with Savi had only galvanized Diana while reminding her how ignorant men could be at times. Now that she knew of the horrors Savi had faced, she couldn't help but want to rage at him for asking her to tell such intimate details without any preamble or warning.

When the doors to his quarters opened for her, Diana blew into the room like a force of nature before she spotted him at his desk. "For a man who wishes to help people, who prides himself on his empathy and heroic nature, you are a _fool_."

Jim glanced up at her, dumb confusion written all over his face. The expression would have been charming if she had not been so vexed. "Excuse me?"

"She is a victim, and you asked her to tell us of her life without any consideration for how that might affect her!"

Jim rose from his seat, furrowing his brow as he made his way over to her. "Don't you think you're being a little harsh? She's a Starfleet officer, she can handle answering a few questions."

"The Orion Syndicate sold her mother into slavery. She narrowly avoided the same fate while her sister was _eaten_ by their own kind because she was deemed too difficult." Diana was not known for pulling her punches, and she saw no reason to do so now. "Tell me, Jim, would you have wanted to tell your commanding officers of such atrocities in your life when all you wish to do is forget them? Those are scars that never disappear, never fade. And you didn't give her the courtesy of a warning! The slavers that beat her and would have held her aloft in the auction house were all men!"

As she berated him, she could see Jim's expression shift from disbelief to guilt and self-reproach. When she took just a moment to breathe, he held his hands up in surrender. "Diana, I had no idea! None of that was in her record, I expected her to just give us the high level details!"

"If that is the case, then why did you put yourself on the other side of the room?"

"Because she's a crewmember and I didn't want her to feel pressure from her _captain_. Since she was in Starfleet, I assumed she had escaped, and we know so little about what they do." She tilted her head, brow still twitching in anger, but he continued on. "Diana, please, believe me. I _swear_ , if I had realized those were her circumstances, I would have handled it completely differently." He reached up to rub his eyes in distress. "Ah, _shit_. I was so focused on Jaylah, I should have asked." Turning away from her, Jim sighed and tried to put some distance between them. "I will… go apologize to her myself before we leave. Upsetting her was absolutely not my intention."

An uneasy silence fell between them as Diana resisted the urge to further berate him and Jim did a wonderful job of doing it to himself. As she watched him slowly pace the length of his quarters, specifically the area dedicated as his office, she felt her anger melt away. He was clearly upset with his own actions, and she knew that he had chosen to hide something from the crew, which meant he carried more weight on his shoulders than she knew. But, not for the first time since they had returned from Argelius IV, Diana found herself wondering if this was an oversight… or perhaps a way that Steve's memories had subtly changed him. If that was truly what happened.

In truth, Diana still wasn't sure who she was watching. She had barely been able to see Steve, had no time to say any of the things she had always wanted to. Yet, by the grace of the gods… he was there in front of her now. With a new lease on life and no need to be beholden to his demons.

So, why did she feel like Jim was allowing himself to indulge in Steve's old habits?

"You are not being entirely truthful with me. Or with the crew." She finally said, careful to keep the anger out of her voice, but not at the expense of her own authority. Diana was older than anyone on this ship, and she did not appreciate secrets. She never had.

"I have no idea what you're talking about - "

"And that is how I know you're lying." She said simply, crossing her arms over her chest. "You only say that to me when you don't want to tell me the truth. I don't even need the lasso to compel you, that is your tell."

He turned to face her, looking up at her with those intensely blue eyes that always seemed to catch her off-guard. This time, she was struck with how concerned he seemed. Not that he was caught, but by what he was hiding. "You're better off not knowing."

"I have killed the God of War." She replied, undeterred. "I can handle an inconvenient truth."

After a moment, an almost exhausted chuckle escaped him. "Yeah, I remember…" The way he said it gave her the impression that it had honestly slipped his mind. Maybe that was for the best. Maybe, as he said, the memories were beginning to fade. Or perhaps, they just didn't occur to him immediately. As he had mentioned to her before, it gave them both the same level of nostalgia. "But, I had every intention of telling you before we left the ship. I just wasn't sure how."

Diana tilted her head as she regarded him. They had spent months carefully getting to know one another. It pleased her, even if it frustrated her, that she had begun to tell when he was trying to protect her. She tried to remind herself that she was part of his crew, and if it was a secret he kept from all of them, it was out of respect, not to be condescending. "Jim. What is wrong? You do not get to lecture me on trust, then hold back. Even if you felt you couldn't tell the crew, at least tell me."

The poignant reminder that he had spent the better part of a very chaotic week holding a grudge against her did the trick. Nodding, Jim made his way over to his desk and leaned against it, arms crossed, contemplating what he clearly needed to say. In quiet moments such as this, she found herself examining his features all over again, idly considering details that she had been reluctant to really admit she noticed. The way he combed his hair back, the way the uniform hid a more muscled body than he let on.

 _Stop it._ She told herself, filing those thoughts away for another time. There was a crisis at hand, and it was no time to start reminiscing of how they kissed… even if… that was exactly what she was doing…

The subconscious was inconvenient. It enjoyed recalling precisely the most inappropriate of thoughts at the worst times. She was certain that was a universal truth.

"I told everyone that I had to call in all my favors with Commodore Paris, and that's true. But, what I didn't tell them was that I don't have authorization to do this mission at all."

Diana was stunned. "I don't understand. Why wouldn't you be able to do this?"

"The Orion Syndicate runs too closely to Klingon territory," Jim sighed, clearly perturbed. "Between the dilithium we need on Coridan getting pounced on by the pirates and the tensions with the Romulans, Starfleet doesn't want to stir up any 'unnecessary tension' with the Klingons."

Diana could tell it bothered him greatly. Another poignant reminder that Jim was still himself. She imagined that in time, she would stop second-guessing the occasional quirk of behavior. "You could have told the crew. I'm sure they would have backed you."

"I know, but I didn't say anything, because if this goes south - and it very well could - they have a degree of plausible deniability." Jim's voice was heavy, burdened with the clear guilt at putting his crew in that position. "They can tell Starfleet Command I ordered them to do it, and that means I'm the only one who goes down." Jim looked up at her, smiling tightly as he uncrossed his arms, bracing his hands on the edge of the desk. As if he was chatting about the weather instead of treason. "I had a feeling you'd volunteer, but that's why I turned Uhura and Sulu down. I can't have them caught in the wake of this if it goes badly. You're an ambassador. They will give you diplomatic immunity, you might get a slap on the wrist. I could lose the _Enterprise._ " He went quiet for a second, his gaze drifting off to nowhere in particular. He chuckled in dry amusement. "Which, in a way, is fitting, because I had to lose her to meet Jaylah. She's worth it, and she didn't even realize it."

Diana had never been prone to jealousy, but for a brief moment, she was reminded that Jim Kirk was naturally charismatic, flirtatious, and had a reputation amongst his crew. For the first time, she found herself wondering how far that had extended with the woman in danger.

As quickly as the thought struck her, though, Diana brushed it aside. She was still more concerned that he had chosen to take this burden on himself. She stepped closer to him, reaching out to rest her hand on his shoulder, smiling softly. "Thank you for telling me." With the same sweet tone that she thanked him, she continued on with a level of straight-faced teasing that would have made Kal proud. "But, now that I know you have absolutely no permission to do this, I am coming with you. Because you are _absolutely_ going to get yourself killed if you go alone."

Jim outright laughed as the jibe sank in. "Oh, really?" He stood up to his full height, eye to eye with her. "You know, I happen to be an _accomplished_ diplomat, and I've gone undercover countless times. I can handle this."

Diana grinned, glad to see his bravado was back in rare form. If this was how their arguments would go in the future, she looked forward to more of them. It was a far cry better than the way she had kept him at arm's' length, or even worse, the way she had pushed Steve or Bruce away. "Oh, I'm sure. Quite accomplished." She echoed, teasing him.

"So far, you have, what, two official missions on the books? I have dozens." Jim said, rakishly grinning at her. "And you've not gone undercover yet. I have."

"That means I have a 100% success rate, so I am perfect." Diana shot back, smiling in spite of herself.

Jim's gaze turned a little less amused, a little more genuine. "Well, you are that." The remark was as easy as breathing for him, and it reminded her for a moment of how close they were. In their conversation, they had somehow drifted to nearly touching each other. It would have been very easy to lean forward, to kiss him again, to feel the way he kissed. It was different, less hesitant, than Steve.

The fact that she found herself comparing the two yet again reminded her that she had not yet put some of her doubts to rest. It seemed all too easy to fall into a pattern with Jim that felt wonderful and comfortable… but somehow felt unfair to Steve. Even if he was there in spirit… she wasn't sure she could let herself go as far as she wanted.

Instead, she cleared her throat and took a step back, smiling. "We have a mission to plan for, Captain."

If he had any objections, he didn't voice them. Instead, he just nodded and slipped into the comfortable friendliness she associated with Captain Kirk while he was on-duty. "You are absolutely right, Ambassador. I am fairly certain it's time to make you green as the grass."

"Yes, and I am a bit uneasy by the notion, so I would appreciate the company while he explains the procedure." She motioned to the door with a tilt of her head.

Jim nodded and motioned for her to head that direction. "I completely understand. You're not the only one who has to have changes done."

"Oh, are you going to be green as well?" She asked as they stepped out into the corridor.

"No. Sadly, it's not uncommon for non-Orion races to trade in slaves. So, I need some other physical attributes changed to make me look a little more non-human." He motioned to the bridge of his nose. "But, the sooner we can get this done, the sooner you and I can leave." He shrugged. "That's of course, providing we have an appropriate ship in the cargo bay."

Diana let Jim's talkative nature carry them both away. She had a feeling that before this mission was over, they would be wishing for the simple moments of levity again.


	33. Liar, Murderer, Smuggler: Act II

**Liar, Murderer, Smuggler: Act II**

 _Stardate 2264.73_

 _Personal logs: Ambassador Diana Prince, Federation Starship: NCC-1701-A: U.S.S Enterprise._

 _Captain Kirk and I are en route to the planet Verex III on the edge of Klingon and Orion space on a mission that could cost him his career, and yet he seems serene. Unfortunately, it is quite the journey, even at the maximum speed of warp seven that this ship can go. According to Jim, this is an Argosian vessel, confiscated just a week before_ Enterprise _arrived in orbit around Themyscira. I am fortunate that the controls and displays all utilize a standard Federation format._

 _But, the Argosian people themselves are nothing like their vessel. They are quick to anger, and as Jim has told me, similar to the Klingons. After discussing Jaylah's temperament with Chief Engineer Scott, I have come to the conclusion that she would most likely be taken by one of the Klingons as a prize. While I have had woefully little time to study the Klingon culture, their mating and social cultures seem to relish violence. They may see Jaylah as alluring because she is willing to draw blood. But, if she is purchased by an Orion for being "difficult", she could become a meal on some depraved trader's table._

 _I cannot allow that to happen._

 _I have often found myself at a loss for the actions that mortal creatures take against each other. When I was young, it was all too easy to blame Ares for mankind's cruel and capricious nature. Yet, as I have now been introduced to the depravities of the Orion Syndicate, I find myself reminded once again that mankind's greatest downfall is often himself. And this affliction is not just specific to humans. It has its roots across the galaxy. I can no more blame Ares for the warmongering ways of the Klingons and Romulans any more than I can blame the hyena that scavenges the kills of other predators. He has always been, and always will be, a god of opportunity._

 _Which is why I am compelled to bring justice to Jim's friend, and all those who have suffered under a slaver's whip. While I know Jim is focused on the immediate retrieval of his ally, I cannot say I am as eager to leave once we arrive. Since Doctor McCoy was good enough to provide me with a full dermal pigmentation and pheromone treatment, he assures me that I could blend in with the Orion people for days, if necessary._

 _I do not think we will need that long._

 _It is said that the gods shared many similarities, and if I am truly one of them, then I must do what they have done._

 _I will free those the Orions have enslaved. I will protect Jim's friend and his career._

 _I need only be a god of opportunity._

* * *

Several hours after Diana had reported to Sickbay, she was still trying to ignore the strange itching sensation on the roof of her mouth. She had attempted to implement a number of distractions while onboard, and in the first few hours of the trip, simply monitoring systems and gaining familiarity with the cargo and ship had done enough.

Now that they were only eight hours into a twenty hour trip at warp, she had run out of menial tasks to distract her from the obvious and incessant _itching_.

"Does your mouth not _itch_?" She finally sighed in exasperation, turning to Jim in the captain's chair beside her. The ship had been completely silent save for the occasional beeping of a console.

She told herself that he was chuckling at her because she had startled him. "Bones said there might be some side effects from the pigmentation," He offered as way of explanation, but Diana simply sighed and leaned back in her chair, crossing her arms over her chest.

"I do not think it's the pigmentation." She remarked. The silver of her bracelets looked so stark against the emerald skin. Her armor had been painted black with a polymer that Scotty promised would come off with the right solution, but even so, she had been forced to wear additional layers of clothing that could only be described as… scavenged. "Perhaps, it's the pheromones?"

Jim's eyes widened as she shifted in her seat, and before long, she realized that he was… staring. At her bosom. "It could also be the…" The way his voice trailed off suggested he was trying to find the right words and failing. "Other things he did." Diana glanced down at her bosom, then back up at him. Quickly, she dropped her arms to her sides so that she wasn't propping them up. Jim's eyes quickly darted back up to her eyes. "I am… _so sorry_ …. " He breathed before turning to look back at the console. "Bones promised me the antidote would last longer, but maybe the dosage is wrong."

She sighed, annoyed at how uncomfortable the situation made them both. "Remind me to reprimand Leonard when we return. I have no shame in my body. My breasts are _there_ , they do not need to be artificially increased simply to give the illusion that I am desirable."

"Well, you're absolutely right about that. There's no illusion, you're _completely_ desirable." The flirtatious remark slipped from his lips with ease, but there was certainly tension behind it. Diana gave him a sidelong look, more because she was trying to gauge just how serious he was. The moment her eyes met his, the captain cleared his throat and looked right back at his console. "Just… an objective opinion, that's all. I thought that before the pheromones and… increases."

Diana sat up a bit, suddenly aware that she had made him a bit embarrassed. Or, if not embarrassed, acutely aware that they had still not spoken about his feelings for her. And she had not been able to adequately describe her own. She knew she loved him. The lasso had shown her what her heart had been trying to tell her for months. But, there was still a small voice that reminded her that a step towards Jim meant a step towards Steve. And that she could lose the captain just as easily.

 _Lois was my home_ … It had devastated Kal to lose Lois. Diana did not wish to carry that burden again, even her heart had already decided it was worth it.

"Anyway, there's a medical kit in the back. I can try to find something to relieve the itching." Jim rose out of his chair and stretched his arms up. The v-shape of prosthetic ridges on the bridge of his nose twitched as he yawned. With the five o'clock shadow quickly turning to wholly unprofessionally salt and pepper scruff, Jim looked nothing like the captain of a Federation starship. But, it was a look she couldn't ignore. "Besides, I need the walk. You should've said something sooner."

"It didn't bother me until I had nothing else to focus on," She replied, turning a bit to watch him. He had changed into attire more fitting of an Argosian male before they left, but she had spent little time considering it. The black pants and black shirt were a stark difference from the blues and heather gray she typically saw him in off duty, or the gold of his uniform. Of course, to call what he wore a shirt was somewhat disingenuous to shirts. His chest was quite exposed, as the shirt barely closed near his navel. For a brief moment, she was reminded - yet again - while she had seen Steve intimately, known all his scars and the lines of his muscles… she did not know Jim Kirk.

In proximity with nothing but each other and the mission to focus on…. Diana found herself wanting to close that knowledge gap.

She had spent months trying to ignore the feelings which pulled her towards him emotionally. As a result, she had told herself the physical attraction had all been because of his resemblance to Steve. After they had kissed and she'd realized that there were subtle differences that made him entirely new to her… the attraction was _not_ because of Steve.

And now, it was acutely impossible to ignore.

When he turned and pivoted away from her, graciously going to find the medical kit, Diana realized she had been staring and quickly turned back to face the viewport. As she listened to him rustle through one of the cargo containers, she found herself idly tapping her finger on her thigh as she tried to think of everything _except_ the fact that Leonard McCoy had determined that in order to successfully infiltrate the Orion Syndicate, Diana had to exude the same pheromones as an Orion animal woman.

"How could they call them 'animal women?'" Diana asked, loud enough for Kirk to hear in the aft section. "I don't mean the Orions themselves, I mean in the Federation databases. I've heard your own crewmen call them such things. That is incredibly demeaning."

"Well…" Jim's voice started in the other section, then as he continued, came up behind her. "In our first experiences with the Orion Syndicate in the 2150s, they referred to their own women that way. And from my admittedly limited understanding, it's kind of a badge of honor. That the women are insatiable and alluring." He came up alongside her and sat facing her, leaning against the console.

"Regardless, just because they may refer to themselves that way does not make it acceptable for Starfleet to. A name given in shackles is not a name of their choosing." She said, motioning to her bracelets. "Oppression, imperialistic conquest, dehumanization… these all leave an eternal legacy upon a people. If you truly wish to help Orion women, then stop calling them animals."

"I'm not defending it, I'm just saying I think that's why it's in the database." Jim said, although she noticed he was staring at an object in his hand as if it was steadying him. He twirled the hypospray in his fingers for a moment before he held it up. "I think this is the best we're going to do. It's a histamine blocker for allergic reactions." He motioned to her neck. "If you want, I can…"

"No, I must learn. I can push a button, just show me." She said, only slightly dissatisfied with his answer.

"You dispense with the middle button. The other two control dosage and the molecular compounds, so I wouldn't mess with those." Jim said as he held it out to her.

As she reached out to take the hypospray, she ran her fingers down the length of his hand. Curiously, she found that the itch in her mouth seemed to subside when she noticed the way his cheeks flushed at the contact.

 _Curse you, Aphrodite. Your son is an eternal terror._

The pheromones did not just affect Jim. They were also encouraging her to act upon the impulse she had been fighting. She would be having a _very_ long discussion with Leonard afterwards. The doctor's analysis of Orion women had left something to be desired - or in this case, _everything_ was to be desired.

Before Diana gave voice to that terribly awkward realization, she chose to hope that the hypospray could help. She brushed her hair from her neck, then reached up to dispense the medicine. The light hiss of air was the only indication that the medicine had entered her system, as the itch had momentarily subsided from knowing she had thrown Jim.

"Anyway, as much as I agree with you," Jim crossed his arms over his chest, still leaning against the console and within touching distance. "We cannot topple the Orion Syndicate in one day. We might never be able to."

"Why not? If we remove their trade, they no longer have currency with which to continue the practice."

"Because," Jim said with ease, even though his body language had gone a little more taut and aware. "The Orion Colonies themselves aren't necessarily bad. They have legitimate businesses, but the Syndicate has made it impossible to meet with them. And the Syndicate is spread out in moving fleets and independent outposts. You can take out one and another will take its place."

"But, those who are being forced into slavery, they _will_ fight." She said, leaning forward. For a brief moment, she realized she had just brought herself closer to him, and the pheromones were explicitly based around proximity. "Perhaps we just need to give them the right opportunity."

"What was it Guinan said? Don't borrow trouble from tomorrow." Jim cast a roguish grin her way, a bit more…. Hungry than usual. He plucked the hypospray from her hand. "Let's worry about it when we get there. In the meantime, we have twelve hours to Verex III and no idea what situation we might find." He smiled and pushed off of the console. "Sammy was right about that, you know. Sometimes, there's nothing that can be done until tomorrow."

The poignant reminder of her old friend did just enough to throw her out of the haze of lust that had been building between them for the last few moments. She swivelled the chair to face him as he walked back to the aft section of the ship again with the hypospray. It occurred to her that since he had told her about how he remembered his "time" as Steve, she had not asked him how that felt. And as she noticed bits of Jim's personality that she had previously associated with Steve, she wasn't sure she would like the answer.

"So, then what? We sit here and wait to arrive?" Diana asked him before getting out of her seat to go find him. "After all, the ship has been set on a course. It's not as if you need to monitor it every second."

Jim reappeared in the corridor empty-handed, but nearly ran into her before he realized where she was. To his credit - and to her frustration - Jim Kirk never missed a beat when it came to playfully bantering with someone else. "Oh, really? And I suppose you know a great deal about flying Argosian shuttles? For all you know, I need to be glued to that console."

Diana scoffed at the remark. "No, that's not fair. I have asked to learn how to pilot, even as simple as a shuttle, but Lieutenant Sulu and I don't share the same schedules." She shrugged.

"I can fix that." Jim said lightly, grinning at her. "As long as I'm still captain when we get back." As she chose not to dignify the self-deprecating humor, his smile faded as his eyes began to drift down to her lips. "Of course, there are _other_ things we could do."

"Jim…" She said in warning, even though her heart had fluttered and her blood throbbed in her veins.

"I'll teach you how to fly." Jim said, almost as if the thought surprised him. Then, he tore his gaze away from her mouth and instead focused on the console back at the front of the ship. "I think… if we're stuck on this ship for twelve hours, I should teach you how to fly. You've been wanting to know more about the systems, and…" He cleared his throat and slipped past her, his hand brushing along her waist before he pulled it away. "I need a distraction."

Diana quirked an eyebrow, watching him for a few moments as he made his way back over to the helm console. When it became clear she hadn't followed, he turned back to her and motioned to what had been his seat.

"Come on. It'll be fun."

She sighed and shook her head, walking over to him. "I'm not concerned about whether or not it will be fun." Diana slid into the seat ahead of him, looking at the console. "I'm more concerned about whether or not you will be able to focus on teaching me."

Jim scoffed from his new position directly behind her with his hands on the back of the chair. "I am a professional. If I have to just keep calling you Ambassador Prince to keep focused, I will do so."

She spared a glance up at him and could see that he was doing this as much for himself as he was for her. "All right. Teach me how to fly helm. I've flown older earth aircraft, but nothing quite like this."

"Really? What, you cruised around on a jet plane?" He asked, teasingly.

Diana smiled, recalling her time with the Justice League. "In a manner of speaking. It was more than just a jet plane." She wasn't sure she wanted to go into the details of how precisely she had let Bruce talk her into flying a stealth aircraft over Qurac. "But, this is not the same thing. There are many controls I don't know, and some that you've only shown me from my brief experience with an Ops console."

Jim took up position a bit to her right, leaning over her as he motioned to the buttons. "Okay, well, to start, here's the stellar cartography map. If you're looking to set a course, you would start here. You would select the course marker, input bearing, pitch…" He continued to rattle off the various components of the helm console.

Diana managed to keep up with him as he walked her through the basics of how to plot a course and how the sector grids were laid out. As he continued onto the navigation sub-menus, though, the roof of her mouth started to itch again. It was horrendous and certainly had no resemblance to how she _actually_ reflected arousal and interest in a normal setting.

Nevertheless, it didn't stop her from leaning a bit more to the right against the armrest, shifting so that she found herself brushing against him. She only stopped when she could feel the solid weight of his body against her.

Neither of them addressed it, but slowly, as Jim kept talking, he leaned closer and closer, the hand that had been at the back of the chair shifting to run along her shoulders, then towards her front.

Eventually, Jim stopped talking about the console altogether, and he bent his head towards her. That itch needed to be scratched, and he could - no, he _would_ \- be the one to do it.

When the helm console beeped, a simple warning, it was just enough to make Diana realize precisely how close they were.

"Jim…" She breathed, pulling herself to her feet even as her legs threatened to buckle under the sudden warmth and _need_ her body was feeling.

His hands were on her, an arm around her waist, and he was clearly not paying attention to her. He was just thrilled she stood to put them on even footing. "Diana…" He breathed, lips nearly to hers again.

She shakily reached up to press her hand over his mouth, then shook her head. "You are… not yourself right now. And I think I am the reason for that. Maybe it's best if we spend the rest of the trip in… separate areas."

Jim slowly opened his eyes, then realized precisely what he had been doing. The realization would have been comical if she hadn't felt that itch returning again. He pulled back so quickly he bumped into the other chair, almost mortified. "I'm gonna kill Bones," He finally said, aghast. "This is _exactly_ why I asked for an antidote. Diana, I am so sorry - "

"There's nothing to apologize for." She quickly said. "It's just…. That's a conversation we need to have when we are both completely ourselves. Not under the influence of…" She swallowed, a bit mortified by her own heart's racing. It was making it impossible to focus. "Pheromones." She finally finished, nodding as if to help solidify the idea for both of them. "So…. one of us should be here… and the other should... " She struggled to find the right words, then settled for the easiest ones. "Should not."

"Right…" Jim said, expression still a mixture of mortification and confusion. "You are absolutely right. So I'm… I'll just…" He motioned to the aft section of the ship, then started down that way.

It took Diana a lot longer than she wanted to admit to realize the problem with that. "Jim?"

He turned to face her, clearly trying to play it off. "Mm?"

She motioned to the console. "I think it is safe to say that I…. stopped listening at some point in that lesson, so, it would be best if _you_ were here. And _I_ were there." She pointed to the aft section of the ship behind him.

Dumbly, Jim glanced back that way, then back to the seat and started to laugh. At least they could both find it amusing. He reached up, bracing a hand at his forehead as he tried to control himself. "Oh, I am going to find me a new chief medical officer when we get back. This is all that old lecher's fault."

As she made her way back towards him, she felt momentarily terrified that it had been intentional. "You don't think he - "

Jim shook his head. "No, but…. He is never going to let me live this down."

"Yes, well…" She sighed and slipped past him while he was momentarily distracted. "That makes two of us." Before Jim could reply, she hit the door panel to shut the corridor behind her and locked it.

She leaned against the door, desperately trying to get her thoughts in line.

They hadn't even done anything! But, it was if the anticipation itself had become part of the game. Was this natural for Orion women? If so, it made Savi's insights to their culture even more harrowing to navigate.

Diana needed a shower.

Otherwise, Jim's poor excuse for a shirt wouldn't even make it to the outpost.

* * *

For better or worse, the next twelve hours passed without any further injury to Jim's shirt or his pride. He kept his eyes on the console ahead of him and tried to ignore the nagging way that the pheromones were affecting his senses.

When he and Bones had initially discussed this plan, the idea of "You'll be attracted to Diana" seemed like any other day, and therefore, totally innocuous. But, that was _not_ what this was. He found it nearly impossible to think. Several times in the twelve hour span, he had marched over to the door, trying to find an excuse to talk to her, to get her to open the door so he could just _see_ her.

Thankfully, Diana had more self-control than he did. Or, at the least, it was easier for her to say no by default. He wanted to remind her that he loved her and wanted to pursue everything that meant. To hold her in his arms and show her that she didn't need to hesitate, she had exactly who she needed. She just had to ask.

Once they reached the Borderland, however, all thoughts of how badly he wanted to hold her quieted, then vanished. As he navigated into the Verex system, the sight of far too many derelicts and wreckage of ships, both Klingon and otherwise, left him only with the very real worry that Jaylah might not even be on that outpost. He had no way of knowing if they were too late other than to listen to his gut.

His gut told him they were close, but that they were running out of time.

The closer they got to the outpost, the more he found himself running through his own self-destructive pattern of blaming himself. Scotty had mentioned that he should have checked in on her more, but Jim had hardly bothered. He was so sure that Scotty had a close connection with her, he had never considered that something like this could happen.

Coupled with all the ways that it seemed like someone in Starfleet was involved with her disappearance and he felt like maybe it would have served him right to lose his command bars after this. He made a point never to leave his crew behind, and as Scotty had told her once, she was part of the crew.

And he never gave up on his crew.

Steadied, focused on the mission again, Jim flipped a toggle on the internal ship's comm and heard it whistle. "Diana, you better get up here, I'm docking at the outpost."

He received no response, but a few moments later, he heard the door unlock and Diana stepped back onto the bridge. She made her way back to her chair, then took a seat.

"I've got a couple of old smuggler codes I think should work for this - " Jim began, looking down at his console to pull them up.

He didn't get much further before Diana suddenly reached over and mimicked the same movements he had done to open a hail to the _Enterprise_ before they left. When he balked at her, she simply smiled. "I didn't know how to fly, but Nyota has certainly taught me about her console."

Jim frowned at the implication that his chief communications officer had one-upped his entire senior staff.

Diana quickly opened the channel. "This is Falashi. I have come for _lodubyal_.You will grant us docking clearance so that I may purvey your exotic wares." She paused, then added as an afterthought, much to Jim's amusement. "Please."

There was a long pause before the docking control on the other end replied, " _Very well. Bay 10. No weapons. You will be checked for disruptors._ "

Jim stared at Diana in awe before flipping the comm line closed. "I thought you didn't like lies."

"I don't." She remarked, smiling back at him even through all that green pigmentation. "But, I was a spy for some time. I quickly learned that to tell a small falsehood in search of a greater truth is, while unpleasant, sometimes rewarding and necessary. Falashi is the name of Savi's mother. She frequented several outposts as a madam. Let us hope she's not here."

As Jim went to initiate docking controls, he leaned back with a smile. "I am impressed." For a moment, he recalled their train ride from London towards the front lines. He could barely recall it now, but he did remember her jibes about Chief being a smuggler. "By the end of this, Diana, we'll both be liars and smugglers."

While he had been hoping for a smile, instead, Diana rose from her seat and pulled her shield from its compartment in the bridge storage. She set it on its hook at her back, then swept her scavenger's cloak over it. "Let us hope they give us Jaylah, or we may be murderers yet."

Twenty minutes later, Jim and Diana had successfully bluffed their way into the main processing center on Verex III. According to Starfleet's database, it had originally be the top processing center for Orion Syndicate slaves, bringing in prisoners from all over the quadrant. Since the initial blows between the Federation and the Klingon Empire, however, the center had become sloppier, less focused on quality and more on quantity.

Starfleet's last intelligence clocked the outpost at processing and auctioning off over 5000 slaves a day. Jim had no idea how that was possible… or which auction would have Jaylah.

Thankfully, Jim had learned that while Starfleet and the Federation had no need for currency, there were always scavengers and smugglers who did. So, Jim traded some of the gold-pressed latinum in their stores, piece by piece, until he could get a better idea of where the more exotic, non-Terran types of slaves would be auctioned off.

Once he and Diana had a location, the two of them made their way down to the auction floor in question. As she pushed their way through people, Jim glanced over to see Diana's expression no longer as guarded as it had been when she arrived. Whereas before, she had played the part of arrogant madam, looking for new slaves to train, her brow was knit with concern and worry over the slaves she found in pens across the floor. All of them looked a dehydrated and certainly hungry, and all of them seemed haunted by their circumstances.

He knew that look. He'd seen it before, in another life, with grief and pain no less raw and poignant. And he knew that telling her they couldn't save everyone… wouldn't work.

He just had to hope she didn't ask him to try. Because, he was fairly certain that would _definitely_ cost him his rank.

"Next lot for sale!" A gravelly, cruel voice shouted from a podium high above the others. It wasn't Jaylah, but a Tellerite woman who seemed as though she had already died in that cage. Jim's heart twisted painfully. No sooner than she was on display, the bids started to appear on the screen. The numbers weren't out of his price range, but buying Jaylah back would then be out of the question.

"We better hope no one wants Jaylah as badly as we do." Jim said, finally turning back to Diana.

At least, it was where he had thought she was. She had slipped off into the crowd, but thankfully, he could spot her by the cloak and the telltale walk that suggested she would tear through the crowd if necessary.

"Dammit, Diana…" He hissed, making his way against the crowd to get back to her. "Diana, _please_ , what are you doing?" Jim finally managed to shoulder past an annoyed Lurian before he managed to grab her arm and pull her back. "We need to be watching the auction block."

"No…" She shook her head, then turned to him. "No, Jim, we cannot leave here with your friend. Not at the expense of these people, I'm sorry."

Jim closed his eyes. He wished he could have said he was surprised, but he had had a feeling that if there truly were this many slaves here, she wouldn't let it go. "You're really going to make me do this, aren't you?" He said, resigned to his fate. "Our ship can hold maybe five people. Not five hundred or five thousand."

"If you arm them, they will fight for their freedom. We don't need to provide them ships, they will take them, just as my mother and Antiope took their freedom from Man's World." She looked him over, then continued, equal parts surprised and disgusted. He knew that look, it was the same one she'd given him when she realized spies lied. "You can't honestly tell me that you would _prefer_ to leave them here to their fate, Jim."

Jim chuckled a bit bitterly, shaking his head. "Ha, that's… no, that's not it at all. I just had a feeling you were going to ask me that. But, if we do this, it could go _very_ badly. But…." He paused, realizing what she had not told him earlier, but had clearly gotten into her head the moment Savi had spoken to her. "But, it _is_ what you came here to do." He sighed, releasing her hand and rubbing his eyes. "Great. I guess we're freeing the slaves."

"Next lot for sale!" The Orion slaver shouted from somewhere above them.

Jim and Diana turned, expecting to find another beaten down slave. Instead, he was never happier to hear the most annoyed shouting he'd heard in months.

" _Do'moya utza! Aka dora!_ " The very familiar white-skinned alien woman had been stripped out of her cadet uniform and into her standard Starfleet issue tank top and shorts. Judging from the slate grey stains on her clothing, along with the gray mats in her white hair, she had taken more than a couple of beatings. That should have broken her, and there she was, still kicking.

Literally, as Jim noticed. The Orion slaver took a solid kick to the knee before he lifted her up in both arms and held her aloft.

"Jaylah…" Jim said with a laugh, running a hand through his hair. "Never ceases to amaze me…"

"Aren't you going to bid on her?" Diana mentioned, motioning to the datapadd in his hand. "She will be good to have in a fight."

Jim grabbed for his datapadd, but kept his eyes on Jaylah. Who promptly caught sight of him. As their eyes met, he quickly went to motion for her to be quiet.

So, naturally, he shouldn't have been surprised when the first thing she did was scream:

" _Where have you been, James T.?!"_

Naturally, all eyes turned to Kirk and Diana.

He sighed. "Ah, great."


	34. Liar, Murderer, Smuggler: Act III

**Liar, Murderer, Smuggler: Act III**

Jim didn't necessarily blame Jaylah for wanting to be rescued, and in her defense, it wasn't as if he could have warned her not to call attention to him. Unfortunately, that would not help him in the slightest. He was going to have to think quickly if he planned to get the three of them out of this mess. Smugglers and slavers alike were staring them down, clearly suspicious of any trader a slave would call out to for rescue.

There were a startling number of Klingons in the crowd. Jim was starting to think that Starfleet Command's reasoning for not interfering on Verex had been more politically sound than he'd wanted to admit.

Doing his best to portray a suitably swarthy persona, he gave his voice as much gravel as he could and imitated Bones's good ole Southern twang. Jim thought it was passable. Bones would have threatened to strip Jim's alcohol rations on medical orders.

"Don't pay us no mind," Jim said, reaching up to scratch at his scruff. "She's just cross I let her get picked up by one of ya'll. Told her I'd space her if'n she didn't listen." Jim grimaced, hoping it seemed like an added bit of character. _This is sounding way more cowboy than I was going for…_ He had to hope it was helping, but given the wary looks, he didn't think it was working too well. "And I reckoned this lovely madam here was lookin' for some more exotic ladies to break in…" He jabbed a thumb towards Diana, who had drawn herself up to full height and resumed the role of the confident madam. After all, he had a feeling it was much like slipping into the role of Queen of Themyscira.

The smugglers turned their attention to Diana, and immediately, Jim realized how short-sighted his plan had been. Jealousy reared up out of nowhere, twisting his stomach and making his heart race. Every one of those criminals that looked at her raked their eyes over her like animals. His hand clenched into a fist, expression shifting from the attempt at an easygoing smuggler to Jim Kirk on a mission. Jaw set, he could have been staring down a warbird again.

Diana's hand gently slipped to his, fingers brushing over his fist as if to ease it back open. The fog started to clear as he realized he had been ready to brawl over an emotion he didn't typically indulge. Not only did Jim hardly get jealous, he _never_ got jealous enough to fight. It wasn't in him to be that possessive.

 _The pheromones…_ He realized as he noted the way they were still looking her over. He could see now that most of them had lost interest in their datapadds altogether.

"I'm sure you wouldn't mind if we take care of business with no trouble." Diana said, her voice more like a purr than he could recall ever hearing outside of the observation lounge or the gardens.

Best not to think about it too much.

He caught Diana's eye. Her gaze flicked down to the datapadd in his hand for just a moment before she turned her attention back to the smugglers.

Jim had said it many times to himself and to Bones, but she really was the most beautiful woman he'd seen in his life. And she was using that to mesmerize every scavenger male and several of the females. Jim turned back to Jaylah, dialing a bid as he gave her a sidelong glance that said _Don't fight. Just hang in there._

His soon-to-be-navigational officer clamped her mouth shut, but glowered at Jim Kirk with all the ferocity he had once seen when she fought Manas.

Most of the smugglers didn't bother to bid. He had a feeling they were wondering if they could somehow convince the madam before them to accept their credits or latinum for her time instead.

Jim watched the false name he'd given start to rank higher and higher in the bidding. His fingers kept keying new bids frantically as the need climbed. "Dammit…" He hissed as someone passed him in the ranking. Another higher bid and he was back on top, but he didn't know how long it would last.

" _Sold!_ " The slaver cried, promptly setting Jaylah on her feet.

Jim checked the name. It was his. He sighed in relief, then in that same relentless twang, motioned to Diana. "Then ya'll just give her to Madam Falashi - "

"Falashi?" The new, female voice came from a balcony somewhere to Jim's right. He turned, searching for a face to match as she kept speaking. "You have bought this slave for Falashi, the rhadaman of the Rigellian colonies?" He spotted her. An Orion woman, emerald skinned, red, wild hair, and quite well-endowed, wearing less clothes than Diana, but a bit more than the slaves. _Another madam…_ "Then you give her to me."

"Ah…" Jim faltered, then realized their critical error. Savi was a ginger, too. Just like Galia had been. That madam was definitely Savi's mother. "This is Madam Falashi right here, as you can see - "

"I can see an impostor." The woman continued. "But, I am Madam Falashi. You have stolen my name, and now you seek to steal my wares."

Diana had since turned to face the Orion she had impersonated. Her body language had shifted from monarch to warrior. Jim had learned the distinction quite well in his brief time on Themyscira. Idly, he recalled how easily her mother had done the same. "We have no quarrel with you. But, we are going to free these slaves. All of them."

Jim did nothing less than a double-take at Diana as she simply laid out precisely how duplicitous they had been. "So much for lies being sometimes necessary, huh?" He said, brow furrowed as he dropped the accent. He sounded remarkably like the same man who had tried to give her glasses so she'd be less distracting.

She quirked an eyebrow at him, as if to subtly remind him of his promise.

"Right," Jim said, taking a step back so he was closer to her while pivoted so he could hopefully make his way to the slaver podium with ease. His hands went up into fists, the datapadd dropped to the floor and forgotten. "You heard her. We're freeing the slaves." He said to Falashi and the crowd that was slowly turning on them.

"It is my custom to offer a peaceful resolution before I liberate them." Diana remarked. He'd noticed that her gaze had remained entirely on Falashi, even as the largely male Orion population went to grab their disruptors. "I have given you two warnings. If I must give you a third, then you may be certain I will not give you time to reject a fourth."

Falashi stepped forward on the balcony, the great black dress she wore sweeping the bulkhead with practiced elegance. "And who are you that I should care for your warnings? I am the Madam of this outpost."

"I am Diana of Themyscira, daughter of Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons. My people broke free from our shackles of bondage. And I shall be sure to teach your victims the same."

Falashi scoffed. "No slave or trader escapes my grip. I bring them here, and I will dictate how they leave here."

"Then, you would know that you've kidnapped a Starfleet officer." Jim remarked. "And as I am Captain James T. Kirk of the Federation starship _Enterprise_ , that is really unfortunate for you. Because, see…" He nodded towards Diana. "I'm with her. So, what she says goes."

Diana glanced over at him. The smirk that graced her features could only mean _one_ thing.

"Kill them both! And kill the slave who led them here!" Falashi cried, enraged by the blatant ruse before her.

Disruptors went up and Jim braced himself, trying to think of the best way to get to Jaylah. He knew the chances of getting to her were slim to none. The pack of scavengers between him and the podium were thick, practically a solid wall.

Bolts of green disruptor fire erupted before them across most of the room. In a heartbeat, she was there.

Diana's arms moved seamlessly, blocking one disruptor bolt after another as she effectively covered Jim.

The scavengers panicked, breaking off in any direction they could.

Without hesitation, Diana pulled her shield - which had seemed to the slavers like a part of her armor - from under the cloak and slung it across the room. It knocked two of the slavers down with ease before returning to her.

Jim used the opportunity to take a running start for the line of guards. He dropped to his knees, sliding across the room far enough to pick up one slaver's now discarded disruptor rifle and opened fire.

"James T - " Jaylah's voice went from a frustrated cry to a strangled cough. He cut down the row of slavers that had begun firing on them, then turned his attention to Jaylah. The slaver who had held her for sale had a hand wrapped around her neck and had hoisted her off the ground.

Without hesitation and hawk-eyed, Jim leveled the disruptor and fired, knocking a control device out of his hand before landing several bolts square in his chest. The slaver dropped Jaylah as he went down like a ton of bricks.

To her credit, Jaylah effortlessly caught herself on the railing and used it to climb down before making her landing with a quick somersault to relieve the stress to her bare feet and legs. As more slavers came around the corner from the pens, Jim laid down more cover fire and spotted another disruptor rifle. Jim called her name and kicked the rifle over.

WIth ease, she had it in hand and began to take out guard after guard. Meanwhile, Jim began to make his way back towards Diana as the room filtered out to just the trio, a lot of downed guards, and slave pens.

Klaxons had gone off in the melee and Falashi had disappeared as well.

Jim glanced down at his attire and sighed. "Dammit. I ripped my shirt."

"That is not much of a shirt, Jim." Diana remarked as she placed her shield back on its hook.

"The doors!" Jaylah said, motioning to the last of the heavy bulkhead doors coming down. "They are trapping us!" A fresh bleeding cut had appeared on her arm, oozing with blue blood, but she didn't seem to care.

"Yes, but they have left us with their merchandise." Diana remarked. "Which means we have prevailed in our objective. We can free the slaves, then find a way out."

Jim didn't feel quite as optimistic as Diana did until he saw Jaylah's surprised and ultimately relieved expression towards the other woman. Jaylah wasn't easily impressed or galvanized. Diana had been able to accomplish this. "Look on the bright side, we got to you, didn't we?" He said with a grin.

Jaylah turned to face him, as if finally seeing the captain for the first time in months.

She promptly yelled at him, poking the disruptor rifle in her hand at him to emphasize her point. "Where have you _been_ , James T! I have been trying to escape for weeks! The Academy was supposed to be safe. You and Montgomery Scotty promised!"

Even though Jim had his hands up in surrender, he was grinning from ear to ear. She hadn't changed a bit, including her preoccupation with their names. It looked like Jaylah had turned them into affectionate nicknames now. At least, he hoped so.

"He has been preoccupied with my problems as of late." Diana said, trying to help him. Jaylah lowered the rifle, then turned to regard her fully. Diana extended her hand to shake. "You fight like an Amazon, sister."

"I do not know what is Amazon, but I do know what is a crew." She turned from Diana back to Jim, not so easily dissuaded. "And you do not leave crew behind, James T. You want me for my ship, but then you did not come for weeks!"

"Jaylah, I promise, we got here as soon as we could. But, we didn't even know you were missing." Jim was entirely genuine. She had to know that. "Someone wanted to make sure we didn't find you. If you hadn't been so close with Scotty, we could've been too late." When she seemed to relent, he cracked another smile. "But, we weren't. We're going to get you out of here."

"Once we free the others." Diana reminded him, pointing to the pen. "I can open the pens with my bare hands, give me a moment." WIthout hesitation, she began to stride towards the pens.

It was Jaylah who actually reached a hand out to stop her. "There will be no escape without the collars."

"Collars?" Jim furrowed his brow in confusion.

Jaylah turned to expose her neck to them both, brandishing the thin metal collar with a large sensory device against her pulse point. "These Orions do many things to the slaves. The collar to make us agreeable. I did _not_ agree." Jaylah said that with almost child-like petulance. "The slavers put these on and then the slaves are quiet and sad. It is like Krall's place." For a moment, Jim could see her tough mask slip. It was a moment too many as far as he concerned. He appreciated Jaylah's strength. He knew she hated to be vulnerable.

Without much concern for his own attire, he pulled off his shirt and ripped a long strip of fabric off of it, handing it to her. He didn't say why, he just motioned to her arm and continued on. "So, if we need to deactivate the collars, how do we do it?"

Jaylah took the strip of fabric and began to clean off her arm as he spoke. "I do not know. The guards mention a central control. If we can get there, I can deactivate them."

Diana nodded, then pulled her lasso free from her hook. "I will find the central control."

Ten minutes later, Diana had extracted the location of central control from the least wounded guard and then kicked through a bulkhead door.

As the trio stepped over the fallen bulkhead door into the next set of corridors, Jim couldn't help but smile over at Jaylah and quip, "Hey, at least you don't care if we're breaking _this_ house."

* * *

This place was no less than a maze. Diana could not shake the feeling that every corridor felt like the next. It reminded her of the few times she had been in military vessels, such as aircraft carriers or submarines. It was non-descript by design and therefore, virtually impossible to navigate without some degree of familiarity.

While Diana had been able to compel the slaver to give her some idea where central control was and his familiarity with the outpost, it had not been enough to erase all doubt.

She was not prone to let heat effect her, but even she could tell that the temperature of the outpost was kept intentionally warmer than say, the _Enterprise._ The thin sheen of sweat on Jim's now completely bare chest certainly suggested that it was getting to him. She tried to ignore precisely how badly her mouth was itching again.

As they came to another fork in the corridors with no guards or smugglers in sight, she finally had to admit that she was doubting her own instincts. Sighing, she turned to look back at Jaylah and Jim, slightly at a loss. "This place is a maze. Each corridor looks so much like the next, I am hoping that we are moving towards the relative goal."

"If we find another guard, maybe you could…" Jim pointed to her lasso on her hip. "You know."

Diana smiled, amused by the way he still seemed rather shy about the power of that lasso. In both lives, he'd felt the compulsion of Hestia, and both times, he was left in awe and entirely unsure how to refer to it. "Yes, I _do_ know, and believe me, if we have the opportunity, I will."

As if the thought had just occurred to him (and if the pheromones were still wreaking havoc with his body, it might have been), Jim turned to look at Jaylah, confused. "Jaylah, do you know anything about how you got here? We found your communicator and uniform in the wreck of an old slave ship."

The alien turned to face Jim, shaking her head. "I do not know how I got here, but I remember being in San Francisco. I went to get drinks after my final project. I met someone…." She frowned. "But their face is gone."

"Anything else about them? Anything at all." Jim asked.

Jaylah nodded after a moment. "Yes." She grimaced, then continued. "They wanted to congratulate me for my project. The admirals liked it. But, the voice is gone."

"What was your project exactly?" Jim crossed his arms over his chest and Diana found her eyes drifting down to the way his pectoral muscles were sculpted.

As Jaylah continued, Diana's eyes shot back up to eye-level. "I was making more of those holograms like my traps. They wanted to know how I could make the images without all of their big emitters. How I could make them solid."

"Someone was interested in your holo-technology…" Jim frowned, thoughtfully scrubbing at his scruff. "That's strange. Why would someone care that much about holo-technology to make a cadet go missing? Sounds like you were drugged."

"Maybe." Jaylah remarked, shrugging out of the corner of Diana's eye.

She was staring again and biting her bottom lip, that itch on the roof of her mouth returning in earnest. Perhaps it was the rush of adrenaline from the previous fight combined with the pheromones.

"What do you think?" Jim asked, turning to look at her. When he caught the way her eyes were distinctly not on his face, he took a step closer. "Like what you see?" He asked, only half-teasing.

"I can certainly confirm that you are still above average…" Diana said without thinking.

"James T. Diana, I know this place." Jaylah's voice came down the corridor. While she and Jim had been focused on each other, the other woman was hard at work and already on the move.

Diana turned to her left, trying to place where Jaylah had gone.

Within moments, they had caught up to her at the end of one of the corridors. Jaylah stood before a large viewport with a perfect vantage point to the docking bays on one side of the outpost. "When I was first brought here, they came and took me from a ship." Jaylah pointed down to one of the bays, then ran her hand across the glass, tracing a path towards a door on the far end. "That door leads to processing. The collars go on and then they take you to put in pens."

Diana glanced over at her, touched and deeply troubled that this girl could speak of such atrocities with ease. Scotty had mentioned that Jaylah had been forced to fend for herself on Altamid. In that moment, Diana could see how that had shaped her. It was the same kind of trauma that Steve had gripped so tightly to in a way Jim never did. The trauma that defined them and threatened to make that the sum of their parts.

"Well, that sounds a lot like your central processing." Jim remarked at Diana's other shoulder. "But, we're not going to get very far once we shut it down if they're waiting for us here." He was watching the Orion slavers as they patrolled the ships, ensuring that as Falashi had promised: no ships left without her say. He turned to face the others, motioning ahead of them. "Look, you two keep going to central processing. I'm going to find a way back down to bay 10, see if I can get the ship secured before you free everyone."

"No," Diana immediately replied. "No, we should stay together. I had to block disruptor fire for you once already."

"And I appreciate that, but I am a fully trained captain of a starship, I know how to get out of a jam."

"I have tried this jam." Jaylah remarked, clearly perplexed. "Does that not mean to be in it would make you sticky?"

Judging from the confused look on Jim's face, Diana quickly realized that Jaylah was _teasing_ him. Her unique way of recognizing English and the look on the captain's face suggested that her dissecting a metaphor was someone new for him.

"Well… yeah, but that's not really the point I was going for." He finally replied, then waved her off. "Look, point being, you two are completely capable of getting to processing control. Jaylah, I've seen what you can do, and I have no doubt you can figure out how to shut those collars down."

"You don't even have a shirt!" Diana pointed out.

"Really, Diana? You think a shirt is what I need right now?" Jim fired back.

 _Yes._ Her mind fervently cried, hoping the damnable itching would go away and that she could focus on the task at hand.

Diana furrowed her brow, prepared to argue with him once again. But, she knew that he had already made up his mind. While she didn't agree, she reminded herself that she had made the promise to trust him. She did it in Delphi, she would do it here. Sighing, she nodded. "Very well. But, be careful."

The captain smiled at them both, but his eyes lingered on Diana far longer before he finally turned to go. "I'm the captain, I'm always careful!" He called back as he jogged down the other fork in the road.

Once he disappeared out of sight, Jaylah propped her disruptor rifle on her hip before turning to Diana. "He is _not_ careful." She simply remarked, then turned towards their path.

* * *

As the hour wore on, Diana was never more relieved to see symbols indicative on the walls of the central processing room. She knew the phrase of characters in the Orion alphabet only from the lasso's blessing, but both she and Jaylah crept through the corridors with a level of battle readiness and brief familiarity. Jaylah knew it as the enslaved, Diana from the mind of one of the slavers.

While she was not necessarily against comfortable silence, time spent away from Jim had allowed her head to clear for the first time in hours. Diana found people to be attractive, human and alien alike. But, what drew her to someone was the heart and mind. That was how she knew that the Orion pheromones were at work to amplify the natural attraction she had felt.

Recognizing that Jaylah was as talented as any Amazon with a quick wit, but that incessant itching had not returned, told Diana that the pheromones were hard at work on only physical attraction and - as she could have guessed - only with members of the opposite sex.

That meant she could focus on getting to know Jaylah.

"So, I take it you're familiar with Jim's unique ability to walk headfirst into trouble." Diana remarked as they turned a corridor and continued onward.

Jaylah scoffed, suggesting that there were stories underneath that sound. "James T. set off my traps. He says he is very smart, but he is not smart about his own health."

Diana laughed. "Yes, unfortunately, I think it's an innate affliction of his."

Jaylah furrowed her brow, glancing over at Diana. There was no malice, just genuine curiosity. "I do not know what is 'A Nate' affliction."

Diana smiled, shaking her head, more than happy to explain. "Innate. A natural personality trait. I have spent months with Jim, but… let us say I know him as well as he knows himself." Aside from Doctor McCoy and Spock, the senior staff still didn't know that Jim _was_ Steve reborn. It was an unnecessary level of complication. They had been told the two neural patterns had been resolved. Diana saw no reason to muddy those waters by trying to explain it to Jaylah. "And he naturally gravitates towards trouble."

She nodded. "He is trouble. But, I like James T. He and Montgomery Scotty helped me go to Starfleet Academy." Jaylah frowned. "They helped me leave that terrible place. Krall's place." She hesitated again, before forcing the word out. "Altamid." It reminded Diana of the sacred rites of the priesthood. To say a thing's name gave it power… or took it away. Jaylah was reclaiming the name for herself.

"Mister Scott told me that you had been on your own when he found you." Diana replied as a polite out for Jaylah.

She chose not to take it. "Yes. My family were killed by Krall. When I found Montgomery Scotty, his crew had been taken as well. He taught me what is a crew. A family." The woman turned and paused as they reached the next fork in the road, checking the corners before continuing on. "They are all I have. I was worried they would not come fast enough."

"But, you knew they _would_ come. And they did, the moment they knew you were missing." Diana smiled, then reached out to gently rest her hand on Jaylah's shoulder. When the other woman looked at her, she furrowed her pronounced brow. "You are as much of the crew as Chekov, even in his new posting half a quadrant away."

Jaylah smiled softly, a moment of vulnerability that warmed Diana's heart. This woman had seen unspeakable hardship, but she still had a great heart. "Thank you, Diana. It is not easy to make new family."

"I understand." She replied. The two of them began to walk once more, and Diana found her thoughts drifting back to her island, to her mother. To Bruce and Lois… "Much of my family is gone." She offered to Jaylah by way of sympathy. "I am fortunate, there are many who are still alive and well, but there are friends and family that I lost. And all I have left of them are my memories." As they spotted another sign and kept heading towards the control room, Diana found an uneasy weight beginning to settle in her stomach. The longer she thought of Bruce and Barry, of her mother and Antiope, she felt the grief slowly welling up from the carefully hidden spaces in her heart for them.

That grief would never leave her. Guinan was right: She could make new places for new lovers and friends.

But, it did not change that there would always be empty rooms within that great palace.

One day, Jim's smooth charisma and easy smile would be housed in one of those empty rooms.

And there was the crux of the matter. Diana could learn to take the blessing of Steve's second chance, to live a full life with Jim Kirk. But, it would be _his_ full life. Hers would continue on. Forever. Without him.

Could she really do that to herself again?

"Here." Jaylah picked up the pace, snapping Diana out of her reverie. She pointed with the disruptor rifle to the placard on the bulkhead door. "Central processing. The collar control will be in here."

"So it will be heavily guarded." Diana said, pulling the shield from her hook again. Jim and Jaylah had become comfortable with disruptors. Diana did not need such things. "Ready?"

Jaylah pressed up against the wall alongside the door, hugging cover as she nodded to the Amazon. With a quick move of her hand, Jaylah smacked the door control.

The doors opened quickly, and Diana raced into the control room just as the guards pulled their weapons. Shift held aloft, she braced herself against a hailfire of disruptor bolts. Grunting, she held fast. "Now, Jaylah!" She ordered, sparing a glance back at the door.

Jaylah whipped around the corner and fired off a couple of bolts, then stepped closer to Diana to keep going. Together, the women were an obstacle the guards couldn't overcome. Diana took the fire and Jaylah popped up over Diana's shield, picking off each guard until the last of them fell.

As the last guard dropped like a stone, Diana lowered her shield and Jaylah shut and locked the door again. Putting her shield away, she strode over and gently kicked one of the slavers with her boot to see if he would awake. He groaned and remained otherwise still.

Jaylah had found a console and was frantically typing on the main display. "I can find the override for the collars. But, the guards are back on patrol. See?" Jaylah motioned to one of the monitors while she kept at it.

Diana stepped closer and scowled as watched the monitor. The same slavers that they had incapacitated earlier were now getting back up on the auction floor. With the guards in place, any work done to free the slaves would be for naught if they were still unarmed and weak. "How can we help the others? Is there an armory of some kind?"

Jaylah paused at the suggestion, thinking it over. "Yes. Yes, there is." She said, making her way to a different console and beginning to type. When something chirped at her, she swore colorfully in her native language and bent down, ripping free a few tubes. "I can override all of the door controls when I turn off the collars. But, they will be quick." She finished connecting a few tubes, then stood back up. The console chirped affirmatively now, instead of locking her out. "Here is the armory." She pointed to the map, then touched a few buttons. "And now the collars are off."

Another quick dance of her fingers and the metal collar around Jaylah's neck suddenly unlocked, falling off of her with ease. On the monitor, the slaves began to rise and gesture to one another as their collars started to fall. The door controls suddenly flashed from red to green, signalling they were open.

"Many may die, but it is better to die free than to live a slave."

For some reason, entirely unbidden, Diana found herself recalling one of her first conversations with Jim after they had gone to the _Yorktown._ Just after Pavel had left the ship and they had shared what would become one of many heart to hearts over the months. It had been one of the first times that Diana felt herself truly seeing Jim for himself, even while Steve's ghost flashed before her.

She had seen Jim Kirk, the captain, the defender of the Federation.

 _Better to die saving lives, than to live with taking them._

Jim was not afraid to die. And he was alone on the other side of the outpost. And now, Diana was worried for him all over again.

She didn't care to see the slaves die, either.

Diana motioned to the armory schematic. "We must arm them. Find us a route to the armory and then to the auction floor. Once those have the weapons needed, they can take the outpost, but we will not abandon them to this."

Jaylah nodded, excited for the prospect of paying back the animals who had done this.

Her communicator chirped suddenly. She rifled through her cloak to find it, then flipped it open with ease. "Jim?"

" _I take it you made it to the central processing center."_ Jim sounded as though he was trying to be quiet, clandestine.

"Yes." She replied, making her way back over to the monitor. She looked at the display, slightly lost, then tried to recall what buttons Jaylah had pressed to change the view. No luck. "We've opened the cells and removed the collars. We're on our way to the armory, then we will double back for you."

" _I appreciate that, as I'm sure this quiet won't last long here. The guards just started scrambling."_ Jim paused for a moment. _"You know, if I'm still captain after this, this is definitely one of those stories I plan to tell_ _ **everyone**_ _. Although, it's not quite as funny as Sammy pretending to be my driver, that was a good one. This one I can tease Jaylah about, too - "_

Jim's voice suddenly cut out. Disruptor fire filled the comm line.

"Jim?" She called, trying to hear him over the disruptor fire. " _Jim!_ "

The communicator went dead.


	35. Liar, Murderer, Smuggler: Act IV

**Liar, Murderer, Smuggler: Act IV**

So far, as away missions went, this one was going marginally better than Jim had expected. He had literally lost his shirt, but on his way to Bay 10, he had been able to get the jump on a Corvallen on his way back to his ship. He would have felt bad for stunning him into the wall, but since he knew Corvallens were at best loyal to their credit chips and at worst, loyal to whatever Romulan Proconsul was paying them, he didn't. Instead, he managed to strip off his outer jacket and slip it on. Of course, the "jacket" lacked sleeves and was really just a cross between a vest and a trenchcoat, but it would do the job.

When Jim caught a glimpse of himself in one of the viewport reflections, he had the sudden realization that he looked quite a bit like a classical musical composer. Refined, like Billy Idol.

Sneaking back to Bay 10 had been remarkably easy, if only because the guards seemed too agitated to actually focus on any spot for too long. Their patrols were sloppy, certainly nothing like Klingon or Romulan tactics, but he couldn't figure out why. At least, not at first.

Once he'd made it to the docking bay and found cover behind a number of cargo containers, he'd had an opportunity to listen in on some of the conversation. He expected to catch snippets of frustration at having to track himself, Diana and Jaylah down. Instead, all he could hear was posturing over which of them was doing a better job for Falashi.

Jim was starting to get the impression that while the slavers were the hands of cruel actions… they might not have been the ones to orchestrate them. Falashi pulled the strings on Verex III. _Sometimes, the universe is_ _ **too**_ _small…_ He should've known better. Savi had said her mother was hopping from outpost to outpost, but that had been a decade ago. It was completely reasonable to assume she had made her way into a more stable position, but Jim had been banking on the opposite. _Nothing worse than being outed as a spy by the party you're pretending to be._ Not to mention, he was positive this would make it back to Starfleet Command before they'd be able to get back to the _Enterprise_. There had been Klingons amongst the traders...

As he mulled over whether he could sneak around them and get back onto the transport ship, he had started to get the impression that things had been quiet just a bit too long. There was no way it would last.

Sure enough, when doors suddenly started opening and security klaxons sounded, the guards scrambled to one of the consoles. That boded well for Jaylah and Diana. He had no doubt in his mind that she could handle herself with anything the Orion Syndicate threw at her. After meeting Apollo, this was fun.

Nevertheless, he pulled his communicator and ducked back behind the cargo containers again. "Kirk to Prince." He said softly, tuning his communicator to the encoded frequency they'd decided on.

After a moment, she replied. " _Jim?"_

She didn't even sound out of breath. "I take it you made it to the central processing center."

" _Yes. We've opened the cells and removed the collars. We're on our way to the armory, then we will double back for you."_ So, they really were setting the oppressed onto the oppressors. He had to hope there were enough ships for them to scramble to.

"I appreciate that, as I'm sure this quiet won't last long here. The guards just started scrambling." Jim spared another glance back over the cargo container as he spoke. "You know, if I'm still captain after this, this is definitely one of those stories I plan to tell _everyone_. Although, it's not quite as funny as Sammy pretending to be my driver, that was a good one. This one I can tease Jaylah about, too - " Jim barely had time to spot the guard that had turned his disruptor rifle towards him before a volley of green bolts came his way.

Jim dropped his communicator and hoisted his rifle, firing back enough to knock one of them flat on his back. Unfortunately, he immediately had to duck again as even more guards realized that one of their most wanted was right behind them.

After the last few weeks of having Steve's very real emotions in his mind, Jim half-expected to feel that sense of paranoia come clawing back. But, it never came. Instead, he was levelheaded, focused and pumped up on adrenaline. Disruptor bolts packed a punch, but his rifle wasn't on a lethal setting.

He might as well enjoy the opportunity to pay back the pirates that had kidnapped one of his crew.

Jim wasn't doing half-bad at picking off a few of the dozen different guards trying to get closer to him, but he wasn't going to be able to keep this up forever. They were gaining on him and he had no clear path back to the ship.

And then a door blew clear out of its moorings and knocked two of the guards off of the docking platform entirely. Exhaust vented, expecting a hull breach from some sort of phaser fire and the rest of the guards turned.

Jim didn't waste any time. He fired off a few more shots towards newly exposed backs just before a green and black blur streaked through the bay floor. At that point, Jim slowly just rose from out behind his cover, rifle still raised but with no target in mind. Before he could sight another target, Diana had finished her work and suddenly appeared beside him.

He startled a bit, but he wasn't sure if it was because he'd never actually seen her move _that_ fast or if it was because with her pigmentation and armor color changed, he almost thought he was going to get his clock cleaned by an Orion madam.

He stared at her a bit slack-jawed, not bothering to hide how completely impressed he was every time she entered a room for a myriad of reasons. "Thanks, but you didn't have to rush on my account."

"We heard disruptor fire." She said, as if that was all the explanation he needed.

Jim couldn't help but grin. "It's sweet. You were worried."

Diana pursed her lips, clearly trying not to smile in return. At least, that was how Jim chose to see it. He wasn't sure if that was the pheromones back at work or just his general state of relaxation and ease around her again. Instead of addressing it, she changed the subject. "We unlocked all of the collars and slave pens. The people will take back these ships and find their way back to Federation space."

"Good. That's fantastic. We'll provide asylum to any of those who aren't from Federation planets, but I have a feeling we just cracked open the slave trade. This should keep the ambassadors talking for a while."

"You are a disaster who walks, James T." Jaylah said, also suddenly appearing beside Diana. That had definitely been a result of her soft steps and Jim's single-minded focus. "I like her."

Diana chuckled, shrugging a bit at Jim. "I have decided Jaylah is also welcome among my sisters as an Amazon. She is a force to be reckoned with."

"I told Diana they would not kill you." Jaylah remarked. For the second time that day, Jim got the impression she was teasing him. "But, you are very good at getting hurt."

He scoffed a bit, shaking his head at her in disbelief. "Well, thank you for that, Jaylah. Remind me to assign you third shift when we get to the _Enterprise._ "

Diana crossed her arms over her chest. "Technically, Jim, she is not yet on duty, so anything she says is completely off the record."

After a moment, Jaylah crossed her arms over her chest to mirror the Amazon's body language, smiling for the first time Jim could ever recall. "I _really_ like her, James T. More than maybe I like you."

Jim opened his mouth to speak, then paused, pursing his lips as he realized he had been outplayed. "Fantastic." He breathed, halfway to a grumble, then motioned towards the ship. "Ladies, after you."

Jim caught himself watching Diana long a moment longer than he felt comfortable, then rolled his eyes and sighed. It was going to be a long trip back. This time, he'd ask Jaylah to set the course and confine himself in the aft section.

Jaylah made it to the docking bay door and opened the hatch. As Diana also moved to follow, Jim paused as he caught a reflection in one of the viewports ahead of them.

"Diana, _move!_ " He shouted, turning towards the person he saw in the reflection. He moved towards a more direct trajectory, lifting the rifle up, but he was too slow.

Falashi herself held a disruptor rifle. She fired off a pulse towards Diana, streaking just past Jim's arm before colliding with the ship bulkhead instead of the Amazon.

Diana had plenty of time to act in the heartbeat between Jim's words and the disruptor pulse fire.

In the time it took for Jim to catch his footing, she had moved with that same godly speed that he was still not sure he'd ever get used to. Diana pulled the disruptor rifle from the madam, tossing it aside, then hoisted her off of her feet, her hand gripping her bodice.

"It is _over_. You have lost this outpost, Falashi." Diana's voice was somehow, even through the sudden burst of violence, still kind and sympathetic. "Your daughter would be disappointed to know that you have taken your position of power and continued to abuse others, instead of ending your peddling of flesh."

Falashi's eyes widened. She had grabbed hold of Diana's wrist in defiance, but her grip went slack at the mention of her own kin. Even though Savi had suggested she had several siblings, Falashi seemed to already know which one Diana mentioned. "You know of my daughter?"

"Yes." Diana said softly, but still held her tight. The way Diana's free hand at her side remained relaxed suggested she knew the madam was no threat. "Savi had hoped you sent her to the Federation for a better life. A shame you cannot use your power to achieve that goal for others. You shame her memory." She dropped the trader. " _Change that_." Diana's voice carried a weight that Jim hadn't heard before, but it sent a shudder down his spine, as if he'd heard Apollo speak again.

Jim had said to Apollo that he wasn't a spiritual man, but maybe that wasn't entirely true. He didn't hold stock in religion. But, Diana seemed to know how to move the spirit, whatever that ethereal, unattainable thing was. Maybe Circe and Apollo were right. Maybe he worshipped Diana.

In watching her thaw the frozen heart of this madam, he didn't have a problem with it. She deserved all the blind faith he could give her, because with it, she accomplished miracles. He had thought they would rescue one. She had liberated thousands.

The moment passed and Diana dropped Falashi to her feet. "If you honor your daughter's memory and promise of a better life; You will let us leave, and you will let these slaves leave."

Diana didn't bother to wait for Falashi's reply. Instead, she turned on her heel and strode towards Jim with purpose. She took his arm, much as he always did to her, and led him towards the ship.

"Sure we can trust her?" Jim asked, although he had a feeling she wouldn't have let Falashi stand there if that hadn't been the case.

"I trust in the truth. And now she knows it, too. She won't harm us." Diana said, steel in her voice as they boarded the ship.

She was right. They didn't pursue, and several of the ships warped out towards Federation territory.

The only thing they had murdered that day had been the slave trade on Verex III. Somehow, Jim just knew Diana was right: They would never open the market on that outpost again.

* * *

48 hours, a shower and some sleep later, Jim was clean-shaven, feeling good and wearing civilian garb on the mess hall of his own ship for one reason and one reason alone:

 **WELCOME, JAYLAH!**

The banner was of the weird, metallic old cardboard variety that Jim hadn't seen since an old-timey themed party in his childhood. He found it strangely fitting that Montgomery Scott, the master of trans-warp theory and all manner of technical know-how, had a special fondness for cheesy, 20th century decorations.

Thankfully, since Jim wasn't the man of the hour, he was able to slip in fairly quietly. He had managed to beat the guest of honor, but the rest of his senior staff were milling about and chatting. As he made his way across the mess hall to where Bones, to no one's surprise, was manning a makeshift bar, his eyes scanned the room idly. He nodded, smiling at Uhura and Spock, then waved to Scotty just before he shouted at Keenser to stop climbing onto a table to adjust the welcome banner.

"Ahh, Jim, I was wonderin' if you'd drag yourself out of bed for this." The chief medical officer said with a drawl.

"Why are you _behind_ the bar counter?" Jim asked as he sidled up to it.

"After Ensign O'Brien manned the bar last time, I had 15 cases of alcohol poisoning. This way, I make sure no one gets _that_ drunk." Bones was already in fighting form, grabbing a bottle of scotch and pouring two glasses. "Here. Figured those sedatives might actually let you get a full night's sleep. Could be your last, on account of you tanking your career and all." He held out one of those glasses to his friend with an easy grin.

Jim paused, momentarily aware that he had been insulted. "Aren't you supposed to be off-duty?" He shot back as he took the offered drink. "I thought you normally saved that kind of piercing diagnosis for my physical."

Leonard scoffed and sipped his own drink. "Be glad I didn't make a house call, or you'd still be sleeping. You gotta stop running yourself ragged."

He furrowed his brow, trying to look sufficiently put out. "I wouldn't have been running myself ragged if I hadn't literally felt like I was going to climb the walls." Jim turned so he could lean against the bar counter and check on Scotty again. He couldn't help but smile as the engineer flitted around with a level of nervousness that Jim couldn't recall seeing. "This is exactly why I wasn't going to tell him until she got here."

"Well, that's damn noble of you, but you should've known he'd throw her a party." Bones replied, presumably watching Scotty as well. "You gonna say anythin' when she gets here?"

Jim shrugged, glancing back over at the chief medical officer. "A few words, but this is for Jaylah. Scotty did all the work, she deserves to mingle and get to know her crew. Not listen to me." After another moment of scanning the crowd, he noticed - not for the first time - that there was a smile missing from the crowd. "Hey, is Diana still in Sickbay?" He turned to face Bones. "I thought you said those augmentations would be easy to reverse."

"Oh, they were." His doctor took sudden new interest in his glass of scotch and drained it before continuing. "I just had the misfortune of getting a lecture over some of those enhancements I made." At Jim's amused look, Bones gestured at him to knock it off. "I was just trying to make it _convincing._ "

"Believe me, she was _very_ convincing." Jim said, motioning for Bones to top off his glass. "In fact… " He stood a bit straighter. "Those pheromones were more than enough. And you know that anti-pheromone block you gave me? It wore off… after seven hours."

Bones raised an eyebrow. "Damn. That fast?"

Jim let out a strained noise that was somewhere between frustration and exasperation, as if to give Bones some small idea of what he'd gone through. "Mmm-hmm…"

Ever the physician, McCoy seemed more thoughtful than sympathetic. "Huh. I reckon that might have had something to do with her Themysciran physiology…"

"You think?"

"I've barely scratched the surface of that medical data, so cut me some slack." Bones grumbled.

"You were supposed to make her less…" Jim huffed, unable to think of a better word. "Distracting."

"You know, maybe the problem wasn't with Diana's physiology." Bones pointed at Jim with the hand holding his glass. "Maybe it was on account of you." Jim's only response was a skeptical look. He was pretty sure Bones was just trying to deflect, but he wouldn't let it go. "Well, you fancy her, don't you? Not gonna be the end of the world if she knows you're aroused by her. For all I know, you worked through that stuff yourself because she gets your motor runnin'."

"Thank you, Bones…" He sighed in a tone he'd used over and over again.

Bones set his drink down and grabbed for the bottle. "Dammit, Jim, I'm a doctor, not a chastity belt. You asked me to counteract the pheromones, but it ain't my fault you're too gunshy to do anything about it."

"I'm hardly gunshy. I'm just trying to respect her wishes. I gave her a lot to think about and I don't exactly know how she feels about any of it." Jim held out his glass so that Bones could give him another drink.

"About you bein' Steve's reincarnation and all. Still not sure I believe any of it, but you're fit as a fiddle aside from a few extra memories." As he poured another, Bones glanced up and past him towards the door to the mess hall. "Well, Jim, there's no time like the present. If you're really that mortified that she knows how you feel, now's your time to apologize." Jim could tell he was half-teasing, but he didn't bother to call him out on it.

Instead, he turned to face the door and felt his breath catch in his throat.

Diana stepped into the mess hall, back to her perfect proportions and a non-emerald skin tone. She wore a blue dress, fashionable by Federation standards, but it reminded him of that dress she had worn into German High Command. The memory was faded, but it still reminded him of how his heart had raced for a number of reasons. He had wanted to be angry with her for not staying behind, but he was impressed she had found such a seamless way to enter the party.

Jim pushed off of the bar counter and made his way over to her in the crowd, just as she finished greeting Sulu. "Nice outfit." He said with a grin. "Glad to see you're back to being… you."

When she smiled, Jim took that as a win. Like usual, the room seemed to brighten simply by her presence. "Yes, I'm quite thankful of that fact. The staring from crewmembers I know are otherwise not interested in me was… quite unsettling. For them, not for me. I know they had little choice in the matter, so I don't hold it against any of them."

Jim chuckled a bit. Without those pheromones working on him, the jealousy was gone. He was yet again just happy to be in her presence. "Well, that's very magnanimous of you. Last thing I need is a rash of petrified crewmembers convinced they've upset the ambassador."

"The attention is harmless," She replied, a sly smile tugging at her lips.

"Personally," Jim shrugged, unable to stop himself. "I'd like to think that's because you're interested in one particular crew member's attention, and you have it." Without missing a beat, he winked at her and continued on. "That being said, if I said or did anything appropriate, or even bordering on inappropriate, I am sorry. I know I didn't present the best image of myself."

The smile she had been fighting turned to a more neutral expression. "Jim, you don't need to apologize. You've made it clear how you feel, and as we discussed, the pheromones were hardly flattering for anyone - "

"Regardless, I have been trying to respect that you wanted time. I know you didn't say as much, but I can read the signs." He let his gaze drop for the floor for a moment. Meeting her eyes reminded him of how badly he wanted to throw caution to the wind and how he'd nearly done _just_ that. "We haven't talked about what I…." He cleared his throat and glanced up in time to see Bones walk by watching them. _Dammit, Bones, I don't need a chaperone._ "About what I said." He finished in a rush, then forced himself to meet her eyes before he continued on. "I really do want to see where this can go. Maybe after the party tonight, we can have a couple of drinks and… talk. About what we want - what _you_ want - and start things off right. For us." His smile took on a more flirtatious, playful light. "I can tell you about the time I drove my stepdad's convertible off a cliff, and maybe you can tell me about what kind of crazy stuff you got into on Themysicra." Diana didn't reply, but her brow furrowed a bit as if a thought had occurred to her, one she didn't share with Jim. So, undaunted, he continued on, a bit more emboldened. "Besides, I've been thinking and I still want to disprove alltwelve of Clio's treatises…"

"Jim, I don't…" Diana trailed off, looking more upset than anything else. In moments, her expression had crumbled and he had no idea why.

Immediately, his heart sank. "Did I say something? Are you alright?"

Diana shook her head, but didn't offer more.

Jim considered pressing the issue, but at that precise moment, the woman of the hour entered the mess hall. The crew started to cheer and applaud as Jaylah walked in with her fresh uniform to a party she didn't expect.

"Captain's work is never done." He sighed, careful to hide his displeasure as Scotty went to congratulate Jaylah and caught Jim's eye. "Look, let's talk after I give Jaylah her dues, okay?"

He thought he saw Diana nod in response before even Spock began to corner him as well. Jim quickly made his way over to his first officer and chief engineer.

"Jim, I believe it is customary for the captain of the Starship to inspect the readiness of any new crew member before official entry on the ship." Spock remarked, a glass of Vulcan brandy in his hand. Uhura stood beside him, playing with the Vulkaya necklace that had been the subject of much teasing in the last year.

"Oh, aye, ye best make sure the lass is ready, cap'n." Scotty said with a mischievous grin.

"You are absolutely right, Mister Scott. Ensign Jaylah, at attention, please." Jim remarked easily. The crowd hushed as Jaylah snapped to attention and Jim let himself get carried away for the moment.

Turning to face his new navigational officer, he grinned at the sight of her in a command gold tunic and black slacks. He noticed that she wore her old combat boots from Altamid, not the standard Federation issue, but made no mention of it. It was just like her. And that made her perfect for his ship.

"I can think of no better officer to have aboard the _Enterprise_ than the one that saved her crew once already. As of Stardate 2264.75, I, Captain James T. Kirk, do hereby give you permission to come aboard and assign you to the position of navigational officer with the rank of Ensign." Reaching out, he extended a hand to her. "Good to have you, Jaylah."

Jaylah always seemed so calm and severe, but as she took his hand, Jim saw something else in her. He saw warmth and kinship. "Thank you, Captain." She said, careful to address him by rank.

He squeezed her hand a moment longer, then released and took a step back. "Now, enjoy your party."

Bones spoke up from the bar, a glass in hand. "To Jaylah."

The crew all echoed, "To Jaylah!" and took healthy drinks.

As Jim turned, intent on getting another drink for himself and one for Diana, he turned back to where he had left her.

He found an empty space in the mess hall, and the doors sweeping closed.

* * *

Diana knew that the better part of valor would have been to remain at the celebration, but her mind refused to grant her the peace necessary to do so. Once the doctor had finished with her, she had had nothing but time to consider the events of the last few days, and her part in them.

She did not regret freeing the slaves, and she had spent the last half of the trip getting to know Jaylah as another Amazon from this wondrous galaxy. But, she could not shake the guilt weighing in her stomach.

It had been there since she first realized that she could care for Jim. The thoughts had come less and less frequently, but they still remained. Even with Jim's assurance that he was, in spirit, Steve, and that this was what he had asked for, there were moments like the mess hall.

When she had walked into the room and caught sight of Jim at the bar, he had been lounging in a way she'd seen countless times. But, the way his eyes took time to watch her… she could see Steve. And for a moment, everything seemed… perfect. Better than perfect, it was a gift from the gods.

But, gifts from the gods never came without a price. And to think of Jim as Steve felt somehow… disingenuous. Perhaps, in time, she could accept that this was what Steve wanted. For her to move forward with Steve, only two generations later and with a different name, a different life. He had wished for more time…

Yet, she could not undo that which the gods made mortal. And to give Jim false hope… she couldn't do that.

She was no longer a child. She was a queen. She had spent two hundred years governing her people. She had spent two hundred years watching Kal-El suffer because his wife had left this world long before he ever would.

She could not be him.

Diana had only been in her quarters a few minutes when the door chimed. She knew that there was no point in avoiding him or what needed to be done. Sighing, she unlocked the door and paced the floor, hands on her hips.

Jim entered almost cautiously, but stepped in enough that the doors shut behind him. "Hey. You dashed out of there at warp. I didn't think my speech was _that_ bad."

"This is not about your speech." She said, exasperated that he had already chosen to use humor to deflect the tension.

"Well, before that, I thought maybe it was my flirting. I know I'm rusty, but my game isn't _that_ bad." That was one of those startling differences with Jim. Steve let Diana do a great deal of talking. Jim seemed to hate the concept of comfortable silence on a deep, _personal_ level. Typically, it was endearing and youthful. Right now, it was only making things more difficult. "Then again, maybe it that particular color blue didn't make you look even more distracting - "

"I can't do this." Diana finally blurted out, turning to face him. Jim looked understandably confused, but he had gone silent. "I can't do this to you." She said, realizing the truth in her words that she had been trying to quantify since they had first kissed.

Jim furrowed his brow, his eyes searching her face with honest confusion. "I don't follow."

"Of course you don't…" She breathed, more annoyed at herself than him.

"Is this about anything I said or did while we were on the way to Verex III - " He started, still trying to puzzle out whatever worried her.

"You have not done anything wrong!" Diana nearly exploded, stunning him into silence. The look of befuddlement on his face reminded her of London, over her anger at the War Council. She appreciated it so much more now, because with Jim it meant something so much lighter, without the horrors of war to haunt his countenance. "This is…" She took a deep breath, struggling to find the right words. "This entirely because of me. You have been nothing but open and honest about the circumstances, about how you feel. I know what you want and I wish I could give it to you."

Jim took a moment to drink that in, then crossed his arms over his chest. She got the impression he was trying to close himself off a bit. To his credit, his expression was almost shockingly neutral. "Are you saying that you don't feeling anything romantic towards me?"

Diana could tell that he wanted to be strong, that he was trying not to let the very notion upset him. But, she knew how he felt. "Quite the opposite." She said softly. She felt as if she was trying to soothe a wound before it had been made. "I love you, Jim. And I did not wish to admit it to myself, but while you were in Elysium, I had nothing but time to consider how I felt about you. And how I felt about Steve." For a moment, she saw relief grace his features. So, she continued on. It would not help to delay the inevitable. "Sometimes, I see you and I _also_ see Steve and... everything feels fine." She smiled a bit. Tears had begun to warm her eyes, threatening to fall with each passing moment as she tried to explain to him the complexities of her heart. "But, other times, when I see you and I _only_ see you, Jim, I feel as though I'm somehow betraying Steve's memory. And I know that's exactly what you say I'm _not_ doing, but it all feels so strange. I am better than this, I do not run from these challenges, but with you, I am _scared._ As scared as I was in Veld." The tears fell regardless. "To think he waited all that time in Elysium and I never knew, I could never -"

Within a moment, Jim had stepped closer to her, a hand slipping up to her face. The very touch made her heart jump, made her move even closer. "Hey… Diana, you don't have to have all the answers today. Look, you figured the hard part out, right? You know how you feel." He laughed a bit, drawing her closer. His thumbs brushed away tears, holding her closer. "I know it's going to be easier for me to roll with it, but don't worry about me." She was sure he hadn't intended to, but his next words felt like they were brushing against her lips. "What do _you_ want?"

Want was not the problem. No kingdoms had burned, no wars had been won, for a _lack_ of want. It was never a matter of what she wanted around Jim. She had him. He was there.

Diana closed the distance between them, her lips meeting his with certainty. In that moment, she thought of nothing else but the way her heartbeat thrummed in her veins and the way he hummed against her. She wanted this. It was selfish, but she could let all of that fall away as they embraced.

She wanted to pull him closer, so she did. She moved them back towards her desk, letting that want carry her until she felt the hard surface against her backside. She stole the air from his lungs as she kept her mouth on his, unwilling to relent. Diana had been many things over the years, and a force of nature was certainly one of them. If she let herself want so freely, she would have him out of those clothes, and make good on all of those promises she had made to herself to learn Jim's scars with the same care she had before. Her hands gripped at his uniform shirt, pulling the material higher so that her fingers could touch his stomach, those muscles that had been teasing her since he had lost that shirt days ago. She had to stop this, before they… before she…

 _Before you change your mind._

Diana paused, her lips stilled against his. Jim didn't seem to notice, more than willing to take over for her. When she reached up, slipping a finger to his lips to stop him, he didn't seem to mind.

Instead, he grinned. "We have time, Diana…." He breathed against the pad of her finger, a hand slipping to the small of her back to keep her pressed against him as his placed a gentle kiss on the only skin she would let him. "We don't have to do this now, but we have plenty of time…"

The reality of precisely why she could _not_ have what she wanted sank in.

The desire melted as quickly as it had arrived. She stepped away from him as another swell of emotion returned.

"No, no, we don't." She muttered, side-stepping around him and forcing as much distance as possible. When she looked back at him, the look of raw hurt on his face, muddled with confusion, only reminded her of how selfish and cruel she had been to give in, even for a moment. "Jim, that's just it. Time is _exactly_ the problem. I have all the time up to and including eternity. You don't. "

Jim turned to face her, honestly stunned at the turnabout.

"I can't ask you to tie yourself to me in any way. You can spend the rest of your life with me, but I can't spend the rest of my life with you. Because, in truth…" Diana shrugged, swallowing. "I have no idea how long I will be here. The other gods, they may fade and vanish without believers, but I have never been bound to such magic."

"But, that's…" Jim was trying to work it out, but clearly couldn't quite come to a conclusion that gave him any peace. "Surely, I am not the first person you've loved since 1918."

"That's true, there were others…" Diana breathed, her heart twisting painfully. "But, they were on my terms. They were primarily physical, and even the emotional ones… I watched them die. I had to watch as they grew old and questioned if I could still love them." She swallowed. "And none of them have _ever_ come close to what I feel for you. Then or now. And I already lost you once, I cannot do it again."

Jim took a deep breath, then reached up to scrub his face with one hand. "I… I don't know what you want me to say. That doesn't matter to me. I don't care if I grow old." Perhaps he thought back to the brief memories he still retained of the Nexus. "Any more time with you was enough."

"You say that now." She said. "But in twenty years, you may not feel the same. And I watched what happened to Kal when he lost Lois. I don't want to be like him, aging and waiting to die while the world passes around me and I play the role of matron." Diana could tell that Jim was ready to fight the issue, but she knew her mind. "I love you, Jim. But, I am _not_ ready to be in a relationship with you. I don't know if I ever will be. I don't know if I can bring myself to love a mortal. And it's not fair to you to give you the impression that I am fine with this when I'm not." She reached up to wipe freshly fallen tears away. She had never spoken of those particular fears to anyone. Even as Bruce had grown older, when Lois had started to…. She had always been strong. She had closed off her heart.

Jim had done almost nothing, but he had pried it open nonetheless.

"Please understand that I _want_ to be with you." She said softly. "I just… I need time. And I don't know if it's the time you have. Nor do you deserve to wait for me on the shores of paradise when you could have someone who will be with you in Elysium."

"I don't _need_ anyone else."

"Will you still feel that way in three hundred years, waiting for me to walk through a door I never will?"

For a long moment, Jim stood there considering what she said. That clear pain and heartbreak from earlier had been replaced with something more thoughtful. More determined. He took a deep breath, then finally looked up at her. "If you need time, take it. I am not going to push you into this. Whatever you _can_ give me, even if that's just friendship, I'll take it. But, I just… I don't think that's who you are."

Diana furrowed her brow. "Excuse me?"

He shrugged. "The Diana I know doesn't let her fears, no matter how rational, define her actions. And I think you know that." He made his way over to the door, then paused, turning to face her again. "I know you think you're protecting me, but you don't need to. I saw what was waiting on the other side, and I'd rather not dwell on it. I prefer to live for the day." It was clear he wanted to say more, but he thought better of it. "Good night, Diana."

Once the doors closed, Diana slowly made her way to her couch and sank down. Pulling her knees to her chest, she turned to look out the viewport. The events on the outpost had brought everything to bear. She could live without him. She had done so for the better part of two centuries. But, to think Steve had literally moved the heavens just for another chance with her… there would never be enough time. He would always leave eventually.

When Jim had initially confessed his feelings to her, he had mentioned that Steve had waited for her. That this had been a deal he struck.

She could not ask that over and over again.

This was the best for him.

Right?

* * *

An hour passed before Jim finally made his way back to his own quarters. He had considered heading back to the party, but he didn't want to have to explain his completely deflated mood. Locking the door behind him, he took stock of his quarters. He made his way over to the bottle of wine he'd taken out, then sighed and set it back into the cabinet.

She couldn't love a _mortal._

No, as she had painstakingly clarified, she could love him, she just didn't think she could _be_ with him. Because he might die.

He was the captain of a Federation starship. Death-defying feats were part of the job description.

And she knew that.

Jim had a feeling that had she never known that he had been Steve, she would have been willing to try. But, he didn't know how to explain to her that it was a risk he was willing to take. That it was a burden he could bear.

With a sigh, he unzipped his uniform collar and peeled both it and his standard black tank off. No point in pretending he was still on-duty. He'd enjoy a few hours of solitary brooding so that he could prepare himself for the next day. If Diana wasn't ready, he wouldn't push her. Not yet, anyway. He couldn't figure it out for her, and he understood that he was asking for something huge.

Maybe it was just Jim Kirk's classic stubbornness when it came to relationships, or it was Steve Trevor's single-minded focus to be there for Diana every single day of life he was given.

But, he wasn't about to give up.

A red light blinked on his personal terminal, indicating a waiting transmission. Immediately, he felt a weight settle in his stomach. Who would have left him a message?

Crossing to his desk, he flipped the transmission on to play. It was audio only. And priority one. An admiral direct from Starfleet Command.

" _Captain Kirk. This is Admiral Kent._ " Formal rank and title. _Shit._ Jim stood a bit straighter, jaw set as he listened. _"As of 0600 hours on Stardate 2264.75, you are hereby recalled to Sector 0-0-1 for a formal disciplinary hearing regarding your actions on Verex III. Be expected to testify to the unauthorized trespass into Orion space and the subsequent risks taken to your crew. We expect you no later than Stardate 2264.85. Kent out."_

The transmission ended with a beep, one that echoed throughout the deathly silent room.

They were going to question him about Verex III. They were going to call his rank into question. His command.

Captain of a starship, huh? Maybe not for long.

He turned back to the liquor cabinet, staring at the bottle of wine before pushing it aside. He pulled the bottle of Saurian brandy he'd picked up a few months back, then grabbed a highball glass.

He set them down and poured himself an overwhelmingly large drink before taking a seat.

It looked like he wouldn't be getting any sleep tonight. He had to nurse a bruised heart… and try to save his career.


	36. The Bridge: Teaser

**The Bridge: Teaser**

 _Stardate 2264.81_

 _Personal logs: Ambassador Diana Prince, Federation Starship: NCC-1701-A: U.S.S Enterprise._

 _It has been nearly six days since we returned from the unfortunate business on Verex III. In that time, I'm afraid the captain and I have been at relative odds. Nor have I been able to spend any time with Jaylah. As the new chief navigator, she has been quite busy on the bridge, but I have been told she rejected any counseling opportunities with Dr. McCoy. Not that I fault her. As someone who clearly spent so much of her life alone, it could be difficult to open up to others. I hope to remedy that once I return, as I find myself across Federation space once more._

 _Earlier this week, Admiral Kent contacted myself and Commander Spock regarding a unique opportunity._

 _For reasons I'm not entirely certain, it seems that an ambassador on New Vulcan - Commander Spock's counterpart from an alternate timeline - had been the careful architect of a controversial attempt to make peace between the Klingon Empire and the Federation after decades of cold war and border skirmishes, much like relations with the Romulans. Conner believes that I could help ascertain if this is a truly viable peace, or if the Federation has opened itself to attack._

 _To that end, myself, Commander Spock and Lieutenant Uhura have been dispatched via long range shuttle first to New Vulcan, and later to a neutral ground. We have spent the last two days on the planet, and in that time, I have learned of the terrible tragedy that befell Spock's people. Or rather, Spock finally revealed the nature of the temporal anomaly that the_ Enterprise _had been embroiled in and the subsequent destruction by Romulans from a possible future._

 _I had many questions for the commander, but we've agreed to table the discussion until our longer journey to the neutral location. Instead, I met with fellow ambassadors on the planet and gained a more in depth understanding of their unique culture. It fascinates me to no end that Romulans and Vulcans share an ancestor, yet like the brothers raised by the She-Wolf, Romulus became bloodthirsty._

 _For the most part, I was left to my own devices on New Vulcan. I had half-expected to use the time to study the Klingon language with Lieutenant Uhura, but she was also occupied, whether by personal or professional business, I do not know._

 _As pleasant a distraction as the Vulcan culture has been, I've focused on the nuances of the Klingon culture from the Starfleet databases. If Vulcans are as steadfast as mountains, the Klingons are as volatile as a volcano._

 _In truth, I am not certain that peace is achievable at this time. I have studied the Klingons, their reasons for animosity with the Federation, and now, coupled with how my actions may have affected their relations with the Orion Syndicate, there may be no room for friendship._

 _But, I refuse to surrender before the battle has begun._

 _My mother once told me that of all the words of wisdom an Amazon must learn. I have always taken them to heart, and as we arrive to our intended destination, I find them comforting._

 _Don't kill if you can wound. Don't wound if you can subdue. Don't subdue if you can pacify, and don't raise your hand at all before you've first extended it._

* * *

"We have successfully achieved warp seven. Estimated time of arrival to the designated rendezvous point is approximately 7 hours." Commander Spock's hands moved seamlessly over the helm console as Diana turned to look at him from the operations station. Not that she had much to do on a perfectly immaculate Federation shuttle. As Crewman Oviedo had pointed out before they left, the _Moore_ was a newly refitted vessel with enhanced warp nacelles that could allow it to achieve warp seven for extended periods of time.

Diana had to take him at his word that this was a feat that showed its superiority to the other vessels in the shuttle bay.

"So, then we have seven hours to prepare for meeting the Klingon delegation after I have already spent several days doing so." She remarked, almost disappointed that she was so prepared. "It does me no good to continue studying." She had watched Klingon films to grasp a basic understanding of their culture, their love of battle, sex, and drink. She'd run through as much of the language's basic syntax and grammar with Nyota as she could hope to recall in less than a week's time. She was as prepared as she would ever be.

Nyota chuckled from the communications console, then pivoted her chair to face her. "We can take the time to decompress before we arrive, then. And, I hope that means I can ask for your advice." The two women had spent a great deal of time together in the last few days, but solely in a professional sense. The look on the comms officer's face suggested this would not be a professional conversation.

Diana leaned back in her seat, quirking an eyebrow in curiosity. "You have spent the last two days on New Vulcan. One would think that a multitude of advice and opinions would have been available to you."

Spock remarked from his seat, still focused on the viewport ahead of him. "Nyota feels that this particular request would be best fulfilled by an individual already assigned to the _Enterprise_ , and I am inclined to agree."

Diana glanced from the first officer back to Uhura. The two of them had been so private regarding their relationship that it had been several weeks before Diana had learned they were involved. Whenever the stoic Vulcan ever used her first name, it was a sweet reminder to Diana that there was great affection between them. "I am not sure I would be the best to give advice, but now I'm curious."

Nyota smiled, her hand idly reaching to play with the beautiful necklace that rested on her collar. "Spock and I have completed the last of the preparations for our commitment ceremony. Due to the unique nature of Vulcan culture, the actual ceremony is _very_ private."

"Broad strokes, if you please, Nyota." Again, Spock had not turned around, but she got distinct impression he wanted the conversation to be handled with typical Vulcan efficiency.

"The point is, Spock and I agreed that we would like to get married. On the _Enterprise_." She finished in a rush, a breathless chuckle indicating that she was amused at her own nerves.

Diana was honestly surprised, but tried to keep that muted. She had… many questions and a number of concerns. It wasn't her place to question, but she found herself replaying the same concerns she had about any relationship with Jim. The expression of excitement and nervous joy on Nyota's face reminded her that Diana's reservations had no place in her thoughts right now. "That is wonderful," Diana said after a moment, smiling. "I'm not entirely sure what you need my advice on, as you've made the biggest decision already."

"We were going to ask the captain when we get back from this mission, but that entirely depends on how things go." Diana furrowed her brow in confusion, so Nyota continued. "I mean, if Jim can't do it, then we'd like someone equally in a position of authority and as a Federation ambassador, we would like to know if you would be willing to perform the ceremony."

Diana held a hand up, clearly thrown. "Wait, why would Jim not be able to do the ceremony? I thought his briefing with the admiral would only last a few days."

Uhura's expression fell. She glanced over at Spock, who also turned to face the ambassador. Clearly, they knew something Diana did not. "He's not going for a briefing, Diana. I thought he would have told you."

"We haven't seen each other much," Diana remarked.

"The captain has been recalled back to Starfleet Command to answer for the incident on Verex III," Spock said, looking almost contrite that they had to be the ones to tell her. "He may lose his command. It is highly likely they will demote him."

Diana thought for a long moment, face screwed up in confusion as she tried to recall any time that he might have mentioned that to her. In fact, he had actually told her that he was going back for a briefing with the admiral.

He had purposefully taken to heart what she'd told him the week before, that he had a tell. He didn't tell her he had "no idea why" they wanted to see him. He had a very good story.

Diana's heart sank. In her attempt to keep their relationship professional… he had given her a taste of her own medicine. He was proving to her he didn't "need" to be protected.

Typical.


	37. The Bridge: Act I

**The Bridge: Act I**

"He really didn't tell you?" Uhura seemed even more annoyed than Diana was. "Unbelievable." The comms officer turned to her fiance, dropping the last of any semblance of professionalism for the moment. "He is such a stubborn ass." She spat, exasperated, even as Spock simply rose an eyebrow at his partner's clearly emotional response.

It was touching that she was so upset on Diana's behalf, but she only knew part of the situation. "Please, sister, don't assume the worst of Jim."

"I'm not assuming the worst of him, this is _completely_ typical!" Uhura said, perturbed to an extent Diana hardly saw from her. Then again, most of their conversations were so civil and friendly, it wasn't often that Uhura let herself rant or rave about anything. "He does this every time. He does something reckless, then he does everything he can to make sure no one else can do so much as throw him a rope."

"Seeing as how the only individuals aware of the clandestine nature of the mission were Jim and myself, he intentionally decided to keep the truth from the crew. I knew that before we left for Verex III." Having to defend Jim's actions only made Diana consider them from his perspective. In truth, it helped ease the heartache of knowing he had kept the hearing from her. She had a strong notion of what he had been thinking. "By encouraging me to take this mission, perhaps he wanted to spare me from having to testify."

"That is a likely and logical scenario." She wasn't sure if Spock was trying to help Diana or simply placate his lover.

"It's a logical scenario for him to cover his ass," Uhura scoffed, getting a bit more animated with every passing moment. "And even so, why wouldn't he tell you? What did he do now?" The accusation suggested that Uhura meant that in a personal sense, not as ambassador and captain. "I was sure you two had… gotten close. And now, he won't even tell you he could lose his ship? It's like Carol all over again. He finally figures out what he wants in a relationship and so naturally, he - "

"Nyota, please stop." Diana finally said, holding her hand up with a firm shake of her head. "There is no relationship." The statement was final and honest. It had been the first time she'd verbalized what had happened between herself and Jim. "I chose not to pursue it, so please don't hold it against him. I am sure I will speak with him when we return, but until then…" She trailed off as Uhura's face fell. Diana knew that the crew had been somewhat invested in the friendship and connection she and Jim had forged, but this felt somehow more personal. She seemed almost as upset as Diana had been. "He doesn't need to give me any more information than he chooses to tell an ambassador. If I hold a grudge, it will only be more hurtful for both of us."

For a moment, Nyota's jaw remained slack as she clearly tried to process and determine what to say next. Diana had a feeling that she wanted to ask why, or how, or any number of other questions, but considering Diana's answer would most likely upset her further, she hoped her friend would decide against it.

"Nyota, I believe we have given the Ambassador enough information to consider our proposal." Spock chose that moment to play the role of mediator. Diana was never more relieved to have his cool voice of reason to distract from the uncomfortable subject. "There is no need to press the subject further."

Uhura's mouth closed abruptly, nodding slowly as it sank in. Diana had the distinct impression that their sisterhood had been somehow… shaken by the issue, but didn't know how to necessarily ask.

"We have seven hours until we reach the rendezvous, so I'm going to take this opportunity to get some rest." Nyota finally said, her tone carefully neutral. She stood, then made her way to the aft section of the shuttle. She paused, then turned back as if she wanted to say something to Diana, then thought better of it and disappeared into the crew quarters section of the shuttle.

Diana found herself staring at the closed door, worried that she had somehow damaged Nyota's trust in her, even if two women had talked often about a number of subjects, but she had kept their conversations about the captain to professional banter, then later, to only slightly more personal teasing about Jim. She suddenly realized that her friend was far more invested in the possibility of a relationship than Diana had assumed. Again, she had made the misstep of sharing the information she wanted to at her own pace and it had backfired. Acting like the sovereign her mother wanted to be always seemed to end in missteps...

"Nyota has had the distinction of knowing Jim longer than any of us, save for Doctor McCoy. Which means she has watched him handle romantic entanglements with his usual... charm and finesse." Spock sounded relaxed, even sympathetic to her, right up until he finished the sentence. His wit had been so dry, she'd nearly missed it. "I believe she has made a significant emotional investment in the welfare of your relationship. Or, at the least, the possibility of one. She feels you are well-matched. I am inclined to agree, especially given the unique events on Argelius IV."

Diana chuckled softly, although there wasn't much humor to it. "And that is precisely why I could not commit to a relationship to him."

"That is most unfortunate. I believe Mister Sulu was convinced he had won the wager." Spock said with that same dry wit. As Diana simply stared at him quizzically, he leaned back slightly, steepling his fingers together. She had learned several weeks ago that it was his way of providing her his full attention. "May I ask what led to that decision? Given your significant emotional attachment to Steve Trevor, and Jim's explanation to me that he is, in fact, Steve Trevor in spirit, then it seemed to me as if a romantic union would have been… logical."

Diana looked at him, momentarily thrown. "I thought Vulcans didn't put much stock in emotion, even romance."

Spock's lip quirked into a smirk, much to Diana's honest surprise. So much of her interactions with the man had been rooted in his stoic persona. "You would be correct. As I am half-human, I feel I am entitled to at least a partial inclination towards romance. Else, my engagement would be very short-lived."

The choice of words was meant to be glib, but it struck Diana entirely too close to home. She went quiet, taking sudden interest in her bracelets beneath her ambassador's jacket.

"It is… curious that you use that word." She said, considering the situation at large. Her shock at Spock and Uhura's impending committed life together had only reminded her of her reluctance to engage in one of her own. "May I ask a personal query, Mister Spock?" She asked, quirking an eyebrow at him and mirroring his own formal tone in a polite jest.

Spock simply nodded, although the smirk was still present.

Diana licked her lips as she considered her words carefully. "You are young by Vulcan years, but I understand that your life expectancy is roughly double that of humans, correct?" He gave her another nod. "My lifespan is infinite. Jim is a drop of water in a great pool by comparison. Did you consider that you would need to say goodbye to her one day? That even if all things are equal, assuming you enjoy long lives together, yours is still longer by a great deal."

Spock tilted his head slightly as he considered the full breadth of what she'd said. After a long moment, he spoke with a level of warmth she'd never heard from him. "That is true. That has always been a concern of mine. As you learned while we were on New Vulcan, I lost my mother due to Nero's attack on Vulcan. I have had my fair share of experiences dealing with grief and death with many of those I consider friends and family. In fact, for a time, I had made the decision to sacrifice my Starfleet career and return to New Vulcan. I felt it was my necessary duty to propagate my species for the full extent of my life. As much as I love Nyota, I felt it would have been... " He hesitated. "Kinder to release her from any obligation she felt to me. My thought was that she could find someone who would suit her better."

So, they had had the same exact conversation, and Spock had taken the same actions she did. Diana pursed her lips, inhaling deeply before she continued. "But, clearly, you changed your mind. You're now planning to marry."

"Indeed." He leaned forward slightly. "A number of factors contributed to that decision."

"I would guess she didn't particularly care for you ending the relationship arbitrarily?" Diana thought back to Nyota's reaction and realized it was quite likely that she had put together the circumstances.

"Yes. She felt that this was a decision we should have made together, and ultimately, I had intended to speak with her on the subject further, but the events on Altamid led me to rethink my decision entirely." Spock reached into his pocket, pulling a small device free. "Ambassador Spock, my counterpart in the primary timeline that Nero had come from, passed away. Much like Jim, I felt as though I had met someone who both was and was _not_ myself. I thought it was my duty to continue his work." He deftly opened the device and held it out to her. Diana took it and found herself staring at a group of individuals in very different uniforms, decades older, and yet… she knew those faces. Somehow. "What I failed to understand was that my counterpart had led a full life as both a Vulcan ambassador and as a member of Starfleet. And in the end, it was his emotional connections to this crew that he cherished the most. Surely, the crew must have passed before he arrived to the latest point in his timeline, yet he did not close himself off from experiencing those friendships."

Diana's finger ran along the edge of the photo as she drank in the details. Jim's smile, McCoy's kind eyes, Scotty's grin… Diana wondered where she had been in this other timeline. Her experiences with Barry had taught her a very long time ago never to linger on what _could_ have been, on how timelines could change and move like paths of a river. But, she wondered… for just a moment.

"As I once told Leonard, when you have lived as many lives as my counterpart… fear of death is illogical. And to deny Nyota the relationship and life she wishes, that I, too, wish to share with her, because of that illogical fear is selfish." After another long moment to let Diana consider the picture, she finally handed it back to him. He pocketed it once more.

"Selfish…" She echoed, closing her eyes and mulling the word over. Silence, save for the occasional beeping of consoles, fell between them. "I just want to spare us both pain." She breathed.

"'Pain pays the income of each precious thing,'" The Vulcan intoned.

Diana opened her eyes to find that Spock was still watching her intently. "Shakespeare wasn't immortal, and didn't have to worry about the constant torture he would inflict on his loved ones." She remarked sourly.

Spock quirked an eyebrow. "He also once warned that 'Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin as self-neglecting.'"

Diana sensed a challenge in his tone. He was determined to prove her wrong. She leaned forward, firing back her own words of wisdom from the bard. "Oh, 'it is excellent to have a giant's strength, but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant.'"

Without missing a beat, almost as if he had planned the exchange, he fired back with wisdom of Diana's own people. "'Death does not concern us, for as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist.'"

Diana's mouth hung open for a moment. Epicurus. Huffing, she crossed her arms over her chest, Socrates slipping from her tongue easily. "'By all means, get married: if you find a good wife, you'll be happy. If not, you'll become a philosopher.'"

"'Let no man be called happy before his death. Till then, he is not happy, only lucky.'" Solon's words flowed effortlessly from Spock's mind, effectively stumping the Amazon for the moment.

Finally, she sighed and threw her hands up in surrender. "I am a warrior and monarch. Socrates was right. 'One thing I know, that I know nothing. This is the source of my wisdom.'"

Spock stood, that smirk pulling at his lips. "Then, in understanding that, Ambassador, perhaps you can look at your situation with the captain anew." He made his way to the aft section. "I shall make a pot of Vulcan tea before we arrive. Would you like a cup?"

Diana looked at him for a long moment. The first officer had portrayed the true stoic, but his friendship with Jim ran deeper than she could have ever known. Now, with the additional color of their alternate timeline, she could understand why both Spock and Uhura felt she needed to reconsider.

At his offer, she nodded softly, then glanced back at the aft section. "I would appreciate that. I wasn't expecting such a philosophical discussion so early. I was told Klingons find Shakespeare more compelling than the Vulcans do." Spock didn't reply, but she got the impression that had been intentional. He had wanted her to tilt her focus, presumably so she would reconsider her relationship - or lack thereof - with Jim with fresh eyes. "I appreciate your perspective, Spock. Please let Nyota know that this is not a reflection on how I feel regarding the two of you. And should circumstances prevent Jim from officiating…" She quirked her lips. "I would drag him from whatever demotion they set him on in order to make sure he could participate."

Spock smiled. "Of that, Ambassador, I have no doubt. Let us hope that the captain will not need it."

He disappeared into the aft section, leaving Diana alone with her thoughts. She idly glanced over at the comms panel.

Her fingers itched to call him, to see how he was doing. She couldn't bring herself to be angry, either. She just wanted to know how he was doing, to give Jim her support. No matter how conflicted she was on whether or not she could commit to a relationship, the last two weeks had given her time to be certain that she _loved_ him. And she knew him. She knew how important his command was to him.

She couldn't stand the thought that he would lose the _Enterprise_ because of her.

* * *

If the weather in San Francisco was any indication of how this hearing was going to go, Jim seriously needed to consider resigning. The sky was ominously dark with storm clouds, and the rain poured down in buckets. His boots sloshed through the inch of water already on the ground as he quickly crossed the main courtyard towards the Starfleet Command building, having changed into his grey formal dress uniform. He didn't care for the hat that went along with the uniform most days, but he felt the briefest hint of egotistical pride that it at least kept his hair looking nice in the rain.

Technically, he could have kept on his normal uniform, but given that he was about to walk into the slightly only more polite version of a court martial, he determined that formality would actually help him.

It was strange and bittersweet that he was in the same uniform he had buried comrades in after another near loss of his ship. He had learned to respect the uniform a helluva lot more after that funeral.

He just needed to prove that to Starfleet Command.

He hadn't made his choice to go after Jaylah because of his ego. He had done it because it was the right thing to do.

Jim had left the crew back on the ship, but Jaylah, Scotty, Sulu and Bones were expected to take a shuttle down before the hearing began. They would most likely be called to testify, but he wanted to keep his crew out of the line of fire for as long as possible.

He may have gone overboard in trying to do the same for Diana.

After their… was it a break-up? Could it be a break-up? They'd barely had a chance to get started, but he had admittedly let himself think that they were simply picking up where they had left off, both from 1918 and just before Circe had thrown everything sideways.

Diana apparently hadn't felt quite the same. In fact, knowing that she had lost him once as Steve made her even more reluctant. So, Jim had thrown himself into preparing for this hearing. The moment he got the orders that Diana had been assigned to a diplomatic mission on New Vulcan, he gave Spock and Uhura the clearance to go with her. He couldn't think of anyone he trusted more to have her back during a meeting with the Klingons, but it meant that he wasn't about to compromise her focus with the hearing.

She thought she needed to protect him; he thought he needed to protect her.

Idly, Jim had a feeling that this was probably going to be a pattern, one they would need to learn to work through. He didn't have much time to dwell on it.

The building loomed ahead of him. Jim ducked under the awning and pulled his hat off long enough to shake it free of as much rain as he could before stepping inside. His uniform jacket was fairly water-resistant, so he was able to brush his shoulders and front clear before heading to the lift at the end of the lobby.

His first stop wasn't the main Admiralty Chamber, but the office of one admiral in particular.

Admiral Conner Kent's office in San Francisco was much more comfortable and warm than Jim expected. The door was open, and he had clearly been expecting him from the moment the ship entered orbit. The admiral himself was at his desk, reading something on his console. Jim was startled by the several framed pictures around the room, but managed to keep his poker face.

"Come in, Captain. Have a seat." The admiral said without ever looking up from his console. Jim had to wonder if he was looking over the weeks' worth of captain's logs and supplementals that he had sent as parts of his testimony for the hearing. He knew how those hearings worked. The admirals would call into question his feelings on the Orion Pirates, on Diana, on Jaylah… so he'd provided every pertinent log for those three subjects, packaged to demonstrate his perspective.

Clearing his throat, Jim nodded and crossed the distance to the cushioned armchair across from the desk. "Thank you, sir." He was careful to keep any of his wit and humor out of his voice. Without Diana around - and possibly _because_ he had involved Diana in this mess - Jim didn't want to give Conner any reason to be more stern. He had a feeling that this was going to be a very unpleasant conversation, and this wasn't even the hearing.

The admiral never looked up, nor did he see fit to say anything else for the moment.

That left Jim time to stare at the photos. And there were… a lot. Far more than he expected. Without trying to be too overtly curious, Jim realized he could see the resemblance between a number of the pictures. Dark hair, very distinct angle to the jaws on all of the men.

"The West-Allens." Conner finally said. When Jim jerked his head up to look the man in the eye, he found that the console had gone dark and he was being watched. "They're the closest thing I have to family these days. Barry was practically my uncle. His family line has been… very successful. Even now, Adriana West is the Ambassador currently on assignment to Coridan for the dilithium negotiations." Jim's surprise must have been obvious. "I took a break from civilization. I didn't completely cut myself off from everyone."

"I wasn't suggesting you did, sir." Jim said, trying to recover from his somewhat slack jawed surprise. "It's just…" Jim's natural defense mechanism kicked in with a chuckle and wry smile. "I love my brother and my mom, but I don't have many pictures of them on the ship." In truth, he had a small padd with a few photos in a desk drawer, but he never took it out. He knew Sulu kept his photo of Demora on his console, but Jim preferred to keep that sort of thing to himself.

Although, not for the first time since meeting Diana, he realized he wanted her to see those photos. He spent a lot of time talking about Jim Kirk the captain and adventurer. One of these days, she'd need to meet Jim Kirk, Winona's son, George Jr's brother.

"Everyone's different. I like trinkets." He motioned to a trophy sitting behind him. Jim strained to read the text.

" _World Surf League 2243_ …" Jim made out, then chuckled. "No way, you won first place? You surf? Diana never mentioned..."

Conner blinked slowly at him and Jim's mirth died on his lips. He suddenly had the impression he had crossed a line without realizing it. When the admiral spoke again, it was all business. "I think it's best if we don't talk about the Ambassador too much."

Jim sat back up, practically to attention. "Understood, admiral."

"I had to exhaust a number of favors in order to get Diana to pick up Ambassador Spock's work, and I did that, in large part," Conner leaned forward, fingers laced together as he rested them on his desk. "Because the last thing I want is the admiralty board asking too many questions about her."

"I agree." Jim said, nodding in understanding.

"Yes, I can tell you do, because you're a Starfleet captain with several years of command under your belt and yet, somehow, I'm supposed to believe you personally decided to free the entire population of slaves on the Verex III outpost." From where Jim was sitting, he couldn't tell if he ever had any good will with the admiral. Maybe he'd misinterpreted his friendly nature earlier. Perhaps he'd never been more than the captain Conner tolerated while Diana was around. That twisted Jim's stomach with something not quite like jealousy, but not quite like embarrassment. He wasn't about to use Diana as if she was a bargaining chip, and now he was worried that was what had unintentionally happened. "That sounds like someone we both know, but not you."

Jim's tongue worked against the inside of his cheek as he forced himself to stay professional. "I disagree, sir. The Federation has no tolerance for slaves, and my only recourse to free Jaylah was to disable the slave collars." He shrugged, almost nonchalant. "I didn't know it would unlock the doors for all the pens, but it was a risk I had to take to get her back."

Conner frowned, huffing in a way that felt all too much like Chris Pike. "Cut the crap, Kirk."

"That is a lot of alliteration - "

"You are covering for Diana, and you don't need to. If I submit these reports, the admiralty board will rip you to shreds and you will lose the damn ship." Conner stood, arms crossed over his chest in a movement that mirrored his father. He wondered for a moment what Kal would think of his son, alive and well and… schooling his queen's boyfriend. "If you want to get out of this with the _Enterprise_ and with your commission, then you need to be willing to admit you lied about your reports. You need to tell the admiralty board it was Diana's idea. It's precisely why I sent her to Khitomer!"

Jim paused, all thoughts of his own hearing gone. No, there was no way that was where Conner had sent her. But, he had to make sure he hadn't imagined it. "You sent her… to Khitomer? _That's_ the point for negotiation? The Khitomer colony?" Jim rose without thinking. "I should be there with her! That's one of the most dangerous sectors of space and you sent her in a _shuttle_ with my first officer and communications expert - "

Conner whirled on him, voice dark and foreboding. "Exactly! So she can't get back here in time for the admirals to use her testimony against you. She's a one-woman army, Jim. Believe me, she's in far less danger than you are. So, _stop_ trying to protect her and just _do your damn job._ "

His jaw set as his temper flared. If it had even been just a few years ago, he would have fought back with everything in him just to prove his point. But, that wasn't who he was now. Jim clutched at the bill of his hat tightly instead as he tried to work out if the gamble Conner was asking him to make was one they could win.

It was the right play. Jim inherently knew that. In fact, now that he was thinking back on it, he knew exactly why he'd tried to minimize Diana's role, and that was because he had wanted to protect her. In spite of her diplomatic immunity, in spite of Conner's move to keep her across the galaxy, Jim had still tried to keep her out of his mess.

Conner was right. It had been a gut reaction on Jim's part, and he had to learn to pick his battles. This wasn't one of the ones necessary to win the war.

Jim sighed, then nodded. "Understood. I'll update my reports…" It wasn't often that he felt dressed down, but this was one of those times. "Sir."

"I expect to see you at 1600 hours to meet with your advocate, Commander Ayala." The admiral turned to look at him as the only acknowledgement Jim would get. "Dismissed."

After a moment, Jim turned on his heel and left.

Even though he needed to focus on revising his report, he was itching to call her. Just to let her know, to support her.

She was heading into the literal lion's den and he hadn't even given her a proper goodbye.

* * *

The Khitomer colony wasn't what Diana had expected to see. The Starfleet records had been sparse, but stated that a Klingon colony had been established about ten years ago. As she had spent several days studying Klingon culture, she expected to see the pyramids indicative of their architecture.

While there was at least one pyramid building with the Klingon Empire's insignia emblazoned in red windows, there were also several bunkers with the Federation insignia still along the sides. The records hadn't suggested that the Federation delegation was so… permanently entrenched in such a conflicted planet.

Apparently, Nyota had been thinking the same thing. As they stepped off of the shuttle, the sky had already grown dark as night fell over the eastern continent of the planet. The communications officer had been quiet for the remainder of their journey to the Khitomer system, but when she spoke to Diana, it was without any lingering resentment. It was more curiosity than anything else. "This planet has been under Romulan surveillance for months. Why would the Federation sanction anything as blatant as our own habitat technology?"

"Given the recent tensions with the Romulan Star Empire," Spock was noticeably formal with the Federation's most notorious enemy. "Ambassador Spock felt this would be a positive step towards showing solidarity with the Klingon Empire. An olive branch, as it were."

Diana nodded, considering the cruel actions of the Romulans from the "prime timeline" as Spock had called it and the bombardment they had attempted on Argelius IV.

"To position one's army in front of your allies is the ultimate sacrifice and show of respect." Diana remarked as the three of them began to make their way towards the greater Klingon building. "Antiope would have said it was foolish. My mother would have said it was diplomatic. I hope for the latter and pray it is not the former."

As they neared the larger building, it became quite clear that they had crossed an invisible threshold into Klingon territory. Since they had seen almost no humans or Vulcans in the Federation buildings aside from the landing pad attendant, the commotion of raucous laughter and shouting seemed almost explosive when they rounded the corner.

Diana pulled her datapadd from her back pocket, scrolling through until she found the image of the Klingon Ambassador that had agreed to play the part of Diana's liaison. At least, she hoped he was an ambassador. As Klingons were a culture driven by honor and battle glory, it was apparently quite common for the military ranking to follow a warrior into the role of ambassador. She was apparently looking for a colonel, albeit a young one by Klingon standards. At least, from what Diana could gather from the way the Klingon records were written.

She was both fascinated and admittedly worried by the way Klingons worshipped violence. She found some solace in the great similarity to the Spartans, or even her own Amazons, in that they were Honor-bound. Unfortunately, as Diana had spent time skimming over their Code of Honor, her heart sank as she realized that while Klingons saw themselves as noble… compared to the Amazons, they were still the product of Man's Cruelty.

"' _Ej HumtaH 'ej DechtaH 'Iw!_

' _Ej Doq SoDtaH ghoSpa' SIqral bIQtiq!_ "

The singing had bubbled forth from their left as they made it to the main courtyard. In that direction, a long banquet table with benches had been set up, littered with food that Diana had never seen before, only read about. On both sides, the Klingons were pounding their goblets as they sang. Although, it was more of a drunken roar.

"This is an ancient drinking song about Kahless," Uhura said softly, trying to make sure she didn't catch the drunken warriors' attention.

"Do you know it?" Diana asked, glancing over at her friend and communications officer with a glint of mischief in her eye. She knew that Nyota would have a much better command of the language than she did, especially since Diana had so little practice. And she felt that this was the perfect opportunity to step into the social circle of the Klingons. Amazons were adept at nothing if not slipping into the social circles of others.

Nyota exchanged a long glance with her, then smiled a bit. When Diana simply motioned towards the table, she took a deep breath and held her head high, singing out proudly to the others.

" ' _e' pa' jaj law' mo' jaj puS!"_ Uhura's voice rang clearly along with the other Klingons. The group, startled by the new voice, turned and began to trail off, even as a few sang and finished the verse with her.

" _Jaj qeylIS molor mIgh HoHochu'qu'..."_ The voices died as Uhura finished the song alone, the Klingons grumbling as they looked to one another in confusion.

It was one thing to see Klingons on a static image. To see them grimacing and grumbling to themselves was another matter entirely. Their forehead ridges were menacing, intimidating and pierced to reiterate their tolerance for pain.

And they were all looking at Diana as if they saw another meal for their table.

Finally, one of the warriors barked at her. " _nuqneH!"_ Diana recognized it as the closest thing to a greeting Klingons gave. When she didn't reply immediately, the warrior laughed and shouted louder. " _vjlatlh!"_

"I suggest we do not keep them waiting, Ambassador." Spock said quietly, although he seemed rightfully wary. Diana had gotten the impression there would be more Starfleet officers here, and instead, they had walked into a Klingon outpost with no back up.

Thankfully, she understood why Conner had sent her. They would only respect a warrior, one who was willing to play to their code of Honor.

"Agreed. Especially since I have found the ambassador." Diana only hoped her guttural syllables would sound right. She stepped forward, hands on her hips. " _jiH Diana Themyscira. qaleghneS."_

"Ah!" The exclamation came from the far end of the table. A warrior stood, his forehead ridges quite impressive, but more importantly, recognizable. "You speak Klingon! The Federation ambassador!"

One of the other warriors turn to the standing Klingon and scoffed. "They send us a _woman_ to negotiate?" The warrior grabbed a bowl of what seemed to be worms writhing in a nest and threw it at the standing warrior. "This human _petaQ_ is to order us? Klingon women are not permitted to serve on the High Council and I should listen to a feeble _human_ one?"

"I can assure you, I am not feeble." Diana simply remarked, but she kept her eyes on the standing Klingon.

" _Qu'valth!"_

Within moments, a true brawl had broken out between the two warriors. Food and wine were spilled and went flying. Quickly, Diana grabbed Spock and Uhura each by the arm and pulled them back a few feet as the fight quickly went from the banquet table to the ground. The rest of the Klingons started to cheer and shout, demanding that blood determine the loser.

"Did you say you found the Ambassador?" Uhura shouted over the din.

Diana nodded, then pointed to the two warriors. "Yes, he is fighting now."

One warrior was pummelling the other. "Well," Uhura said, shrugging. "I guess it's a good thing he can fight." She was motioning to the warrior who now had the upper hand.

Diana found herself drawn back to another moment, long ago, and silently wished Jim could have been there for it.

Instead, all she could do was shrug and shake her head, face wrinkled up in sympathy. "That is not Colonel Worf." She watched as the warrior who had spoken standard to them went flying across the courtyard and landed in an unceremonious pile on the ground. The warrior groaned and made to stand, then fell back, clearly passed out from both alcohol and blunt force. She had no way of knowing that to Guinan, that face would have been quite appreciated and well-known as she muttered, " _That_ is Colonel Worf."


	38. The Bridge: Act II

**The Bridge: Act II**

 _ **A/N:**_ _So, I haven't had to do one of these in ages, but I wanted to just address this before the next chapter kicks off. I'm so thrilled everyone's excited to see Worf, but I want to make sure everyone knows that this is_ _ **not**_ _the Worf of TNG, but his grandfather. In Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, we meet Colonel Worf, who is played by the same actor as TNG Worf. In the Prime universe, Colonel Worf defends McCoy and Kirk to a Klingon judicial hearing in the movie and Worf's father, Mogh, is on Khitomer at the time of the Massacre in a few decades_ _. I wanted to give everyone a familiar face while portraying how the Kelvin Timeline has shifted the locations of characters. We don't know if Colonel Worf was on Khitomer this early, but I'm saying he is. Guinan would recognize him because this Guinan spends so much of her time close to the Nexus at the Temple of Delphi that she sees further into her future possible timelines. As to whether or not she will meet Worf in the Kelvin Timeline, well, that's a story for another day. :)_

* * *

Colonel Worf, as it turned out, was quite the friend to the Federation. Apparently, that had not been a popular opinion amongst the rest of the Klingons on the colony, up to and including the remainder of the delegation.

Diana had helped him up and followed him as he wordlessly waved them over to one of the smaller domiciles, ignoring the jeers and scoffs from the other warriors at the table. She didn't have to be an expert on their culture to know that by supporting the loser in the brawl, she had lost face. Thankfully, she was no stranger to such posturing. She would recover.

The small building was spartan, similar to Federation quarters, but with a very distinctly red and brown tone. In one corner, two cots were pressed up against the walls. Worf took a seat at a table nearest to them, leaning back with a somewhat dazed look on his face. Soon, as he realized the humans in his abode were standing awkwardly around him, he slammed his fist on the table.

" _Sit_." He growled, motioning to the other chairs. Diana glanced over at Spock, who quirked an eyebrow at the Klingon's curious behavior. The three of them eventually took their seats and silence fell again. Worf seemed to be focused on taking some time to clear his head.

It gave Diana an opportunity to study the remainder of the room. Along the far wall, there was an altar, complete with candles, clearly sacred bowls and knives. For the first time since she had arrived on Khitomer, Diana found a pleasant way to anchor herself to these people.

If Amazons were meant to be the bridge to a greater understanding between all men, then that surely extended into the stars. And to be a bridge, one must first know where to place the foundations.

"I see you are quite faithful to Kahless, even so far from Qo'nos." Diana finally offered as a way to open the conversation with the ambassador. "I look forward to learning more about Klingon culture, especially the Way of Kahless. I am an Amazon of Themyscira, a people of Earth. I believe we can learn a great deal from each other. We, too, are warriors who believe in honor and battle. But, we temper it with mercy and diplomacy."

Worf glanced back at the altar soberly, then turned back to Diana with a slightly less severe grimace. It took her a moment to realize he was smiling, baring sharp teeth at her as he reached for a flagon on the table before him. "Kahless showed us all the way to Honor. Mercy? Mercy belongs to our gods. And we slew those centuries ago." Worf scoffed. "They were more trouble than they were worth."

Diana sat back in her seat. Perhaps that was _not_ the best foundation to build this relationship upon. If the Klingons did not particularly care of mercy, she had little hope for their willingness to accept that as a negotiation tactic.

"And yet you venerate Kahless as a god." Spock said, as if casually observing the weather.

"Kahless is not a god! We have no need of gods. Kahless is the greatest _warrior_ the galaxy has ever known, or will ever know." The flagon in Worf's hand came slammed down onto the table, sloshing a dark wine across the lacquer and onto Uhura's lap. To her credit, the comms officer simply sighed and looked over at the Klingon, unimpressed. Unfortunately for her, when Worf glanced her way and saw the look of annoyance, he took it as something else. "All Klingons are warriors because of Kahless. I would show you how much of a warrior I am."

Uhura's mouth went slack as Worf softly growled at her. It wasn't one of displeasure. Diana didn't need to have an in depth knowledge of courtship rituals to gather that he was showing sexual interest in the other woman. Trying to stave off any further tension, Diana reached for one of the goblets on the table and slid it in front of the Klingon to get his attention.

"Unfortunately, Colonel Worf, our time on Khitomer is limited. We will have to keep our exploration of your very honorable culture to the purposes of this negotiation." Diana's words were carefully chosen, even as she motioned for him to fill her cup. When he did, she brought the drink to her lips and nearly flinched away from the strong odor. Whatever this drink was, it was quite potent. "So, let us drink to your honor and that of the Federation, who have offered to stand before your people in the coming storm of the Romulan Star Empire."

Truthfully, Diana had no idea if that would work to placate the punch-drunk and inebriated man sitting across from her. She had expected an ambassador, a colleague to work with her in the same professional capacity. She had found a military man with a penchant for starting drunken fights, but not finishing them.

Finally, Worf set the flagon down and grabbed his own goblet, holding it up to her. "Yes! Of course! I wished for the Federation to bring me a worthy ambassador and they send me you: a human woman who speaks with the authority of a man." His mouth split into one of his wide, feral grins as he struck his goblet against hers with another slosh of wine. " _Qapla'!_ "

" _Qapla'!_ " Diana said in reply, sounding a bit more like Artemis or Phillipus in her deep tones. She was beginning to understand why Nyota had encouraged her to bring her armor, even if it remained hidden beneath her ambassadorial clothes. Before long, she had a feeling she would have to prove her authority to the warriors. Sitting back, Diana took a deep draft of the dark liquid in her goblet, feeling it burn down her throat with great prejudice.

She swallowed it down, then cleared her throat free of the last of the tingling sensation. No sooner than the liquid hit her stomach in a dull, warm ache she associated with alcohol, she could tell that this was a brew meant for stronger than average stomachs.

Judging from Worf's expression… it was meant for non-human stomachs. "You drink bloodwine better than any human I have seen. Perhaps you shall prove to be a worthy opponent in this battle."

"The goal is to avoid such conflict," Spock remarked. If Diana had to guess, he seemed… displeased with the situation, in his own muted way. He was intentionally digging at the Klingon sense of honor and victory in battle.

" _Qu'vatlh_! Why did you bring this Vulcan _petaQ_ here? Did they not have any gutless humans to send instead?" Worf lamented.

"I can assure you that Commander Spock speaks of a sentiment I thought we all shared." Diana said evenly. "He did not say there would be no victory in battle, only that we hope to avoid conflict between the Federation and the Klingons. We would save our warriors for the real fight." Although, she still had no idea why the Romulans had pursued her halfway across the galaxy while searching for the Oracle of Delphi. As Guinan had advised, however, Diana was trying to focus on what she could change now. She could forge a peace between the Klingons and the Federation and begin the slow steps to true peace among these vastly different cultures.

Her answer seemed to please the Colonel. "Yes. We will burn across the stars and lay waste to the Romulans. Then, we shall let the Federation live in peace." He nodded before draining his cup of bloodwine in one smooth motion. When the goblet hit the table once more, it was empty and the last of his beating from a comrade had vanished. "This is a future I must build. The Great Houses do not wish to see it, but they must. We are warriors, but there is no strategy in fighting both the Romulans and Federation at once."

"Then why were you selling old warbirds to the Romulan Empire? With cloaking devices?" Uhura's tone was harsh and brooked no argument. "You had to know that they would turn right around and use them on the Federation."

"They turned around and used our own ships against _us_!" Worf growled. The communications officer had stumbled onto a deeply rooted portion of the conflict, even if she hadn't meant to. "They have no honor. We sold them our ships to be used against the Ferengi and the Gorn. Instead, they turned them on us and have started to take our rightful territories."

"None of this information has been conveyed to the Federation Council," Spock said, glancing over to Diana. The two of them had indeed reviewed Ambassador Spock's records together before leaving New Vulcan, and the Romulan counterfeit had not been part of that briefing.

"The Chancellor would never bring such dishonor to the Empire as to admit it to our enemy, the Federation." Worf's tone had shifted after finishing that goblet of wine. Now, as he poured another one and kept his voice even and almost conspiratorial, she realized that he may have never been as inebriated or beaten down as he seemed. Klingons were not known for their subterfuge…

Diana glanced over at Spock, then Nyota, gauging their reactions. They both had similar expressions that suggested they had come to the same conclusion she had. "So, the Klingon Empire is betrayed by the allies they sold weapons to, and now you hope to forge an alliance with us to protect yourselves." Diana said, considering the situation back on his homeworld. "The Chancellor has not told your people of this negotiation, save for the Klingons here on the outpost." Worf nodded, and Diana continued on that assumption. "And you do not want the ambassadors to know the true motive and urgency for the situation, so you got into that brawl with the hope that you could speak to us alone."

There was a glint of mirth in the warrior's eyes. Diana had struck home, had learned the true purpose of their meeting. It was as much to save face as it was to ensure that the individuals who wanted peace to succeed were not at odds. "Such subterfuge is not very Klingon."

Diana smirked. "No, but it is _is_ very diplomatic." Reaching for the flagon, she poured them both another cup of bloodwine. "But, why would the Chancellor give you such sensitive intelligence?"

The doors to the domicile opened behind them and Diana turned. To her surprise and delight, a young Klingon boy scurried inside, carrying a strange weapon that she recalled from Federation Records. A unique combination of staff, spear and scimitar was in his hand as he weaved it through the air with great gusto.

Worf rose from his seat, barking in Klingon faster than Diana could even begin to piece together. She glanced over at Uhura for help.

"Apparently, he's not supposed to be playing with the bat'leth in the house." Nyota said, clearly amused.

The boy relented, lowering the weapon and coming to a skidding halt near his father. Worf reached over and took the child-sized weapon, setting it on the table. "You ask why I wish to make this alliance, then look no further." He motioned to the boy. "This is my son, Mogh. And one day, he shall be a great General in the Empire. But, only if there is still an honorable Empire for him to inherit."

* * *

For hours, there had been no word from James T. Jaylah did not like that, and no matter of pouncing - pacing? - _no,_ _ **yes, pacing**_ \- could change the circumstances.

Jaylah, Montgomery Scotty and Doctor Bones had taken a shuttle down to San Francisco hours ago, but none of the Starfleet Security would let them into the Admiralty council room. According to the others, it was a closed hearing. They would only be allowed to enter when they had to testify for James T.

Jaylah had spent a year in Starfleet Academy and had tested out of almost every class they had put her in. Why could she not be there to defend James T. now?

She did not like subterfuge of this kind. She liked her tricks and her traps, but when it came to family, to a crew, there was no room for such bureaucracy.

"Jaylah, honey, you're gonna make me dizzy," Doctor Bones grumbled from where he stood, leaning against the far wall. Of course, she knew his full name, but she preferred to call him this. It reminded her of when they first met on Atlamid, but in a good way. It was a nickname, as Montgomery Scotty called it.

"I am not dizzy," Jaylah simply huffed, trying to keep her mind off of the hearing on the other side of those doors. They could hear nothing! They could not even get close enough to the doors to listen.

She had to think about something, so she would think about that which she could control.

She had no nickname for Diana as of yet, but Jaylah was sure she could think of one when she spent more time with the ambassador. She liked the woman. She reminded her of her sister, Keelah. She would have fit in with her people.

Jaylah's markings meant _fierce._ That was how her family gave her name. She wondered what Diana's markings would have been, if she had one of her people. She hoped she would have the chance to find out. But, if she understood Scotty's explanation correctly, James T may not keep his ship if this hearing went badly. She did not know where that would send the crew.

But, she knew her crew. She would not let that happen.

"Wonder how long Sulu's gonna take." That was Doctor Bones again, but he wasn't talking to her.

"He said he'd be along soon as the ship made spacedock. Somethin' tells me he's not the one they're gonna want to hear." Montgomery Scotty cast a glance Jaylah's way, one of those wobbly-eyed looks he often made. He had acted like a wounded animal since she came on board. Or he was a nervous one. She did not know that she liked either.

"I know how to testify. I know what it is to tell the truth." Jaylah said, daring them to challenge her.

"Lass, I dinnae mean it like that - " Scotty pursed his lips in a way she recognized. He did not want to seem weak to her.

But, she knew his intentions. "I know how you mean it, Montgomery Scotty." She said quickly, so he would not have to. "I am not afraid. These admirals are not Krall. They are not the slavers. I will tell them the truth, and the will have to see that James T. was right. He came to rescue me." She paused, crossing her arms over her chest as she tried to think of the words to say to make him understand. She had learned their words, but sometimes, she still did not know the right ones. "Because we are a crew."

Scotty smiled then, the relief plain on his face. She had said the words to make him stop worrying about her. Good. "That we are, lassie. And the cap'n appreciates it, I'm sure." As an afterthought, he added: "I do, too!"

Jaylah smiled at him. She had grown more accustomed to using the expression, but she had not done so much around Montgomery Scotty. Even if he was her favorite of the crew. She enjoyed teasing him. Even as she learned their words during her time at the Academy, she took great pleasure in teasing him the most. In fact, she had made many jokes about how he must have always been so exhausted with so many _mates_ to breed with.

That had kept him a strange shade of pink for a day after her party.

"Ensign Jaylah." The voice came from the doorway. The Starfleet security detail had parted and a tall, broad-shouldered Vulcan stood waiting. "Please follow me."

She glanced at her friends one last time before following him into the council room. She had been warned that she would have to testify, but she did not expect she would be first, or that she would have to leave the others behind. That did not sit well. Her mother would say she had _urazi_ in her stomach. Jaylah did not know what the Standard word for those were.

The doors closed behind her, and she turned her attention to the room beyond. The room was large enough to accommodate over a dozen admirals. They sat in a group of tables set up in a large U formation. Many of them she did not recognize, but a few she did. In fact, two of them seemed especially familiar, although she could not place why.

She was led to a seat at the open end of the U. To one side, there was James T. He sat to one side with a commander she had never seen before. She was surprised - again - that Spock was not here with them for this. He was always close by and seemed to have James T's ear. It did not make sense for him to be missing.

Then again, judging from the way that James T. looked at Diana, it did not make sense for her to be missing, either.

"Please have a seat, Ensign." The commander sitting besides her captain said, motioning to her.

She took the seat offered, then looked around the room at the admirals. One of them, a man with a strong jaw and grey hair, even in his facial hair, seemed very familiar. But, she could figure out why.

"Now, ensign, as you know, you took an oath to Starfleet upon accepting your commission. We expect you to follow that oath during the course of these proceedings. Do you understand?" The man was speaking again, although this time he had stood and approached her.

Jaylah bristled slightly. "I would not take an oath I do not expect to keep." She said, letting her annoyance show.

"We need a yes or a no for the record, ensign." The admiral who spoke next was a blonde woman sitting beside the grey-faced admiral. Jaylah noticed that she had some sort of white bead necklace around her neck that she kept playing with it. Her voice reminded her of Doctor Bones, although not quite. The same type of round vowels, but she could not place from where. If she could have asked, the Doctor would have told her that this woman was from the southwest, and he was from the south. "Spare us all the editorializing and follow your orders, if you please."

Jaylah frowned, her brow furrowing severely. " _Yes._ " She said, trying to keep herself from losing her brand new commission. She had been able to follow rules in the Academy. She would follow them here. "I will do my duty and answer the questions."

"Then, let's begin." Said yet another admiral. Jaylah did not like that there were so many unfamiliar faces, and yet the two at the head of the U shape seemed so familiar. "Commander Irosh, let's begin."

Irosh was a man that reminded her of all too many professors at Starfleet Academy. His shirt was stuffed, as Doctor Bones would say. He stood and walked over to her, his grey uniform only making him seem more and more like a statue. A statue that frowned. "State your name and rank for the record."

"Jaylah. Ensign."

"Ensign, can you tell us why you were on Verex III?" Irosh glanced back at the admirals.

It was not new information to these admirals. They had heard this story before, from the captain. Jaylah did not like that this felt so… secretive. "I was taken." She finally said, blunt with her words. "Someone drugged me and I woke up on a slave ship. They stripped me out of my uniform and then the ship was attacked. They moved me to another ship and then put on one of their collars. To make me… agree. Then, they put me in a pen so they could sell me." She made sure they knew that she did not like having to repeat what she had seen, but she refused to let them see that it had scared her.

Irosh simply rose an eyebrow and asked, "... 'They?'"

"The Orion Pirates." She huffed.

"I see." She felt that Irosh clearly did _not_ see, as he seemed casually undisturbed by all of this. Before she could continue, he changed the subject with another quirk of his eyebrow. "You said you were drugged. Can you elaborate?"

Jaylah furrowed her brow and shifted uncomfortably in her seat. "I…." Her eyes scanned the room, momentarily caught on the two admirals she had seen. One of them seemed familiar… so familiar… "I went to the Slusho bar before we were to be commenced. My roommate Sasha could not come, so I went to take my own edge off. Then, someone came up to congratulate me…" Jaylah tilted her head, her eyes unfocusing as she stared as the blonde admiral woman, trying to recall it. But, it was gone. "Then, I don't remember."

She expected Irosh to speak next, ask another stupid question that did not let her explain how good a man James T. was, since they _clearly_ needed the reminder. Instead, the gray-faced admiral spoke up. "So, you don't actually remember what happened? You don't remember who might have touched your drink?"

The man sitting next to James T. spoke up. "Admiral Kent, I'm not sure I follow…"

"He's just sayin' there's a good chance she was three sheets to the wind, captain." The blonde said with her slow, long vowels and arrogant tone.

"My sheets were on my bed!" Jaylah snapped in return. "Why would I bring sheets to a bar? I was not drunk, I was _drugged_!" She did not like the admiral. There was something profoundly wrong in how she spoke, and if Jaylah had to answer another question from her, she would tell her _exactly_ what she thought of this hearing.

James T. cleared his throat from his seat to her right. "With all due respect, Admiral…" He was stalling, trying to get the admiral's name.

"Cale. Admiral Cale." She said, waving him off.

"Admiral Cale, with all due respect, my ensign isn't the subject of this hearing. Regardless of how she ended up in Orion custody, _my_ conduct is in question, not hers." The captain's tone seemed light, but his expression suggested he was not happy. It only made Jaylah more irritated. They should have been thanking James T. for freeing all those slaves. Instead, they were questioning her about how she was drugged!

"On the contrary, Captain," This Admiral Cale said evenly. "She could have been fall down drunk and ended up in a bad part of town."

"Yes, but Captain Kirk would have had no way of knowing that, nor would that change the fact that this ensign was taken by pirates." The man beside the captain said. He was not Spock. But, at least he was looking after him.

"Fine, Commander Ayala." Cale sighed. "We'll leave that to a reprimand for the ensign. Continue, Commander Irosh."

And so he did, even as Jaylah grit her teeth and tried to remember that Starfleet did not like her anger, and that it would not help her. "Let's jump forward a bit." Irosh said. "When did you first see the captain?"

"The auction floor." She could still see the look on his face, the surprise and amusement, then the fear as he realized Jaylah was in danger. "He was trying to buy me before anyone else."

"And did he?"

"Yes."

"Why didn't he extricate you from the outpost then?"

Jaylah pursed her lips, exhaling slowly as she fought to keep her temper in check. "He had no time. A madam claimed that I was hers if they bought her."

"Because Ambassador Prince was undercover as that particular madam, unaware that she ran the outpost." Jaylah simply nodded. "So, the Orions fired on the captain and ambassador and they defended themselves. Fair enough. Why didn't you leave once the coast was clear?"

"Our collars were still on." Jaylah motioned to where the burning device had been on her neck, up against a pulse point. "It would have killed me if we had run. So, we went to free the slaves to take off the collars."

Irosh glanced over at the captain, then back to Jaylah. "And whose idea was it to free and arm all of them?"

"I do not remember. We all decided."

"Would it be fair to assume that the captain would have said no if he had wanted to?"

Jaylah scoffed, the question too ridiculous to take seriously. Had they ever met the man? "James T. is never afraid to speak his mind - "

"I'll take that as a yes." Irosh cut her off so quickly that Jaylah's mouth remained open, but she couldn't speak. "No further questions." And just like that, he turned and walked away from her as if she had given him some great gift.

Jaylah's face was obviously confused as Irosh sat and James T.'s ally stood. Commander Ayala seemed kinder and he had a stylus in his hand, playing with it idly as he walked over to her.

"Ensign, did the captain give you any indication of his motives when he found you?"

Jaylah shrugged, not sure what to say. "He came for me as soon as he could. That is all he said."

"And when you were freed, you said that to escape without releasing the collar would have…" Ayala tilted his head from side to side as if finding the right words. "Negative repercussions. Is that correct?"

"Yes. We had to go to Central Control. It was the only way to turn off the collars." She replied evenly.

"And who suggested, if anyone, that you use central control to free and arm the others?"

Jaylah wasn't sure she liked the answer she had to give. She did not know if this was what James T. would have wanted. "Diana."

"It was Ambassador Prince's suggestion?"

"Yes. But, there was no other way to leave. It was the only choice."

Ayala nodded and tucked his stylus into his breast pocket on his dress uniform. "So, it was an act of self-preservation for you with the added benefit of liberating thousands of illegally imprisoned victims. It was the only way to rescue a crewman in danger." He smiled, then turned to the admiralty board. "No further questions."

Jaylah thought, for just a moment, that she could rest easy. But, much like one of Krall's bees, the other commander suddenly appeared out of the corner of her eye.

"One last question, Ensign?" Irosh asked. "Did the captain issue any protest to the idea of arming all of those individuals?"

Jaylah wrinkled her nose in clear disgust at the idea. "No."

Irosh simply nodded and took a seat. "Thank you. No further questions."

The Vulcan who had led her into the room came back to her then, motioning for her to stand. "That is all, Ensign Jaylah. Step down."

Jaylah stood, but couldn't seem to leave the podium. They had used her words. They had used her words against her and they would just keep using them even after she left. She would not stand for that. " _That_ is why you called me here?" She finally blurted out, looking at the admirals. "To ask if the captain said no? Don't you want to know what it was like there? Do you not care? It was a death place! They _eat_ slaves! It is not the Federation, it is _evil_ and I was there for _weeks_ while I hoped that James T. would come for me! He did not leave me behind!"

The blonde admiral simply leaned back in her chair and played with that necklace of white beads again. It made her so angry to see such callousness. "Thank you, ensign. You're dismissed - "

" _No!_ " Jaylah barked. She was loud enough to echo throughout the room. She was sure Montgomery Scotty could hear her through the doors. "I am _not_ dismissed!"

"Jaylah - " The captain was still so calm, but he should have been bellowing!

If he would not, she would do it for him. " _No,_ James T!" She shouted, stomping her foot. "You and Montgomery Scotty taught me that to be a crew means to never leave your people behind. I thought that was for all of the Federation. If those were lies, then they are no better than the pirates! You rescued me and now they wish to punish you for it! If that is what Starfleet means, then I do not want it!" Huffing, she stomped away from the chair and towards the door, even as she heard that blonde admiral shouting:

"You're dismissed, ensign!"

If James T. was no longer captain of the _Enterprise_ …

Then Jaylah would not be on the ship, either. That was what it meant to be family.

* * *

Klingons at mealtime were like a dysfunctional family of wolves. They barked, they howled, and they gnashed their teeth while they ate, but ultimately, one simply needed to join the pack.

Colonel Worf's strategy for Diana to join that pack of Klingons was to drink and eat like them. Uhura was mildly pleased that it meant teaching Diana drinking songs as well, and the two of them quite enjoyed that particular lesson. Spock, on the other hand, was somewhere between annoyed and exhausted by the two of them in the same way he often was with humans. There were four ambassadors in total: Toproc, a wealthy merchant of a Great house; Motar, a young warrior of great acclaim; Gorkon, a governor of Khitomer itself; and Kor, a young commander who looked quite different from his counterparts without forehead ridges. Apparently, it was a genetic recessive gene according to Worf. Klingons did _not_ speak of it.

Sadly, as much fun as it was to shout in Klingon and bang her goblet on the table while trying to choke down something called _gagh_ , she found herself worrying about Jim.

She had to hope that his hearing was going better than her negotiation. Spock's advice to her on the shuttle had continued to simmer in the back of her mind as well. Knowing that he was in danger of losing his commission because of her idea to free the slaves, she found herself wondering if pushing him away had been the right choice.

 _Typically, if you feel that bad about a choice after you've made it, it was never the right one._ Arthur, the blunt king of Atlantis, had said that to her once, centuries ago. Considering her stomach still swam with uncertainty and guilt over her own reluctance, she found herself relying on an ancient friend's wisdom. Even if she had not seen him in centuries, the two of them had always seemed to be of the same mind.

Diana drained another goblet of bloodwine as two Klingons argued over whether or not one of them had taken too much _gagh_.

"Personally, I would let Motar have the _gagh_ , Commander Torpoc." Diana said as she picked up a plate of Klingon blood pie and set it down in front of the commander. "The blood pie is much better, and I would be happy to share it with you." At least the pie tasted similar to earth's black pudding. _Gagh_ liked to… _wriggle._

It had taken the better part of the hour for Diana to understand that the more rambunctious a Klingon grew, the more friendly they were being. It seemed Klingons disliked subterfuge and secrecy, so their preferred method of ostracization of a non-Klingon was simply to ignore them. Yet, Diana kept up with their drinking and forced down food that ranged from equal parts unique and delicious - such as Klingon bloodwine and _targ_ meat - to downright uncomfortable - like _gladst_. Over the course of the hour, she had managed to gain a toehold in their social circle.

But, she knew what she was doing when she swapped out the plate of food. Torpoc had shown very little interest in the blood pie, but the pie was only a step towards the diplomatic play. He had been the most difficult for Diana to reach. He seemed convinced that he would not give Diana her due respect, and now, she was challenging him. She was implying that he was better off eating the rich, fatty food instead of worrying over the staple meal of warriors younger and more trim than himself.

It was a low blow, but she understood that it was a common challenge amongst Klingons.

" _taHqeq!_ " Torpoc shoved the blood pie away from him, levelling a drunken, blurry glare her way as he grabbed a handful of _gagh_ from the dish that Motar had in front of him now, swallowing it gleefully before he faced her again.. "You insult me! The Federation sends human _women_ to negotiate for them! Of course you would like the blood pie!" Torpoc looked over at Motar and a couple of other warriors. "You are soft! And weak!" He said, still directed towards Diana as he looked back at her. After an hour of building camaraderie with the others, he wanted to draw them back to his side. "You would be better a slave than an ambassador!"

Diana's hands slammed against the table so hard that they could hear wood crack. She stood and loomed over the Commander, all mirth and sense of drunken revelry gone. Some of these Klingons had seemed vaguely familiar from the briefing notes on New Vulcan, but others, such as this one, she recognized from elsewhere.

It was not until he he had said as much that she realized he was one of the Klingons she had seen on the auction floor at Verex III. He had bought slaves before. If there was any hope of peace between their cultures, that trade would have to end. Immediately.

"You dare to speak of owning people as if they are property?" Diana said, scowling. "You insult me, but moreover, you insult yourself. You have no honor!"

" _QiYah!_ " Torpoc stood to meet her challenge, shoving the table back into her. "You speak of things you do not know, human!"

"I know of honor. You are not the only culture to live within a discipline," Diana said, unrelenting. She turned to look at Colonel Worf, who seemed slightly concerned, but ultimately didn't interfere.

Beside Torpoc, Motar stood and pulled his knife, a _daqtagh_ , driving it into the wooden table. "No human challenges the honor of a Klingon and lives to tell the tale!" Motar drew to his full height, baring his teeth as Diana stared him down. "You are very brave or very foolish, woman."

"I do not take kindly to trading people for credits or latinum." Diana simply replied. She had extended her hand to them, but she was quickly learning that Klingons preferred that conflict fuel their negotiation. She would oblige. "If an alliance is to be accomplished, the slave trade will have to end. And that is non-negotiable."

"You are in no position to make terms…" Motar growled.

"On the contrary, I am in precisely the position to make terms." Diana reached forward, grabbing the dagger that had been left in the table. Beside her, she heard Uhura gasp and move to stop her, but she simply held a hand up to stop her. Pulling free the knife, she flipped it in her hand and gripped the blade firmly in her hand until it drew blood. While she showed no sign of pain, she found herself strangely pleased that the blade was sharp yet strong enough to actually pierce her skin. "Name the challenge. If I win, then we will discuss the slave trade in the negotiations. If I lose, then we will not. And we will simply delay that discussion." Of course, Diana had no intention of losing. This would be resolved today.

Motar held her gaze, but seemed less than pleased. Finally, he nodded and stepped away from the table. "Very well!" He turned to Colonel Worf with wild eyes and unbridled aggression. "She will fight with a _bat'leth_! We shall see if she can fight with Klingon honor as well as she talks!"

Diana took a deep breath, her gaze never leaving Motar even as she stepped away from the table and reached up to unfasten her jacket. It wasn't until Motar went to go retrieve weapons from two younger warriors that she turned away to face Uhura and Spock.

The two of them looked less than pleased by her intentions.

"Why do you look so worried?" She asked, almost flippant as she pulled off her jacket and unzipped her skirt, letting it fall to the ground. Diana's armor seemed much more suited to the Klingon culture and to this task at hand. They did not need the ambassador. Right now, they needed Wonder Woman, for all of her ability to punch her way out of a problem if she had to.

"I do _not_ advise this course of action," Spock said with an honest frown. "Klingons are not known for their love of diplomacy, nor do they particularly care to bargain. This could very well jeopardize the negotiation - "

Diana held her hand up to stop him, her jacket casually folded over her arm. "Commander. 'The play's the thing, wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.'" She couldn't help but smile. The situation had turned precisely in her favor. She had no doubt she could best a Klingon warrior, even with a weapon that she had no experience with. "Amazons are taught the art of combat. If I succeed, that creates the doorway to the greater respect I need from them."

"Klingons don't exactly play fair, or nicely." Uhura warned. "Just be careful. Neither of us want anything to happen to you."

"I will, sister." Diana's smile softened as she caught the genuine and touching concern. Again, she was reminded that while she wanted to keep the crew at arms' length, to protect herself and them… perhaps it was too late. She had already made an impression on them.

Commander Torpoc still remained in his standing position at the table, seemingly not satisfied that Motar was about to fight an honor-bound challenge for him. "You have no honor!" He shouted at Diana, slamming his fist on the table. "You have - no - no - honor - " The commander stopped. His words had grown sharp and staccato, and he seemed to be out of breath. Within moments, confusion had flickered across his features, and then another emotion Diana recognized all too easily: _fear._

"Commander?" Diana asked, making her way over to him with a quick jog around the table. The dark color of his face began to grow slightly ashen as he coughed, but could not seemingly breathe in. Worried he was choking, Diana reached for him, only to be blocked by another Klingon warrior. She glowered at the new obstacle, but her anger quickly vanished as the Klingon commander suddenly coughed and sprayed violet blood across the table. "Help him!" She cried, distress evident on her face.

Another spray of blood erupted from the Commander's lips, but it was too late.

Torpoc gave another heaving gasp and crashed into the wooden table, face-first into the _rokeg_ blood pie.

The purple Klingon blood oozed from his mouth and eyes and mixed with the orange hue of the pie, making Diana's stomach turn.

The Commander was dead.

The warriors erupted in angry, startled cries of treachery and murder. The standard tongue of the Federation disappeared into the guttural snarls of Klingon, but Diana had no time to consider what they were saying. She knew Uhura would be trying to translate, but Diana's eyes were still locked on the now lifeless pupils of the commander.

How could this have happened? _What_ had happened?

 _Diana._

The voice was a whisper, a slithering touch against her spine that she had felt many times before. She did not know who it belonged to, but she knew the sensation. She was being warned.

Diana turned, a hand on her lasso on instinct, eyes scanning the crowd of Klingons now coming closer. They all wanted to see the commander, to hear what had happened.

Except for one. She saw his face for just a brief moment, then he disappeared around an alley between buildings.

"Wait!" She shouted, pushing past a few warriors so she could get clear. Once she was, she took off at a sprint to easily catch up with the warrior. She could hear Uhura and Spock shouting for her, then footfalls behind, but she paid them no mind.

She was going to lose him if she stopped for the others.

Diana vaulted herself up out of the alleyways between the Klingon buildings and swung up onto one of the rooftops. She kept up her full sprint, leaping from rooftop to rooftop until she was able to get ahead of the Klingon.

She grabbed for her lasso and slung it with purpose, jumping down off of the nearest rooftop and tightening the magical relic's grip on the warrior.

When Diana landed, the concrete shattered beneath her, showering them both with dust and rock. But, the warrior was in her custody. The lasso had wrapped around his torso, pinning his arms to his sides.

He didn't seem to be fighting her.

That would have been shocking enough if she had not - _impossibly -_ recognized the face. Underneath the forehead ridges and the change in pallor… she knew that face.

"Ares."

The god of war simply smiled at her, the illusion that he was a Klingon bleeding away to reveal a man that had once been sir Patrick Morgan, and after that, Ari Buchanan, a businessman and arms dealer of the 21st century.

"Hello, my dear sister."


	39. The Bridge: Act III

**The Bridge: Act III**

The Klingons in attendance at the dinner had been bloodthirsty enough before Diana had agreed to fight one of them for her honor. The moment the Klingon Commander dropped onto the table, visibly ravaged by some affliction, the Klingons were whipped into a frenzy of angry shouting and accusations.

First, they started shouting at each other in Klingon, claiming one house or another had done such a misdeed. Another would shout in return that the only honor lost was to Toproc's house, because a Klingon stupid enough to be poisoned would go to Grethor, the Klingon version of hell, if Nyota remembered correctly.

She had expected some level of concern for the ambassador, but there didn't seem to be any. They were all too concerned with each other and who could have done the deed.

That was when Motar, who had been ready to challenge Diana a moment before, turned his attention to Spock and Uhura. "Where is she?!" He snarled.

Uhura turned to where she thought Diana had been beside her, only to spot the ambassador far ahead of them, running down an alley. "Spock, come on!" She grabbed at her partner, pointing to where Diana had just been.

Spock's Vulcan physiology gave him enhanced strength compared to humans, but put him on par with Klingons. While Uhura didn't have a problem taking on alien species that were physically stronger than her, in the interest of time, she let Spock take the lead. He cleared a path for them with ease, and the two of them pursued Diana as fast as they could.

The alleyways of the Klingon colony were winding, but strangely easy to navigate. Everything seemed to still be built on a grid formation, so as long as they could see Diana in the alley - or at one point on the rooftops - they could keep up with her.

She didn't hear the Klingon warriors pursue them. Presumably, they lost them at some point in the chase.

A dull thud and crack of stone in one of the alleyways ahead of them. By the time she and Spock rounded the corner, they spotted Diana with her lasso around the waist of a Klingon warrior, holding him firmly. They had somehow managed to arrive between the two of them.

At least… Nyota _thought_ he was a Klingon warrior… until he suddenly seemed to shift back into being a human. She'd never seen anything like it. It was almost as if she'd looked into a pond just before someone threw a rock into it. Everything distorted and shuddered before refocusing.

The man was still in the Klingon warrior's clothes, but he was a Caucasian male with brown hair. He was about as nondescript and unassuming as a man could be, yet in the Khitomer colony, he stood out like a sore thumb.

That alone would have been enough to give Nyota pause. But, the look of familiarity on Diana's face… that was another thing altogether.

"Stay back, both of you." Diana said, her lasso tightly wound around in her grip as she held the man fast. She never took her eyes off of him, but she was clearly addressing the two new spectators. "And do not listen to a word that comes from his mouth."

"Oh, come now, Diana, is that any way to treat family?" Nyota furrowed her brow. His voice set her nerves on edge, although she couldn't place why. His voice's pitch sounded smooth, like honey, and his words were clipped with the royal pronunciation of a British dialect from Earth. But, something in his tone held an undercurrent of _something_. Her aural sensitivity was unparalleled, and there was something in his voice that gave Diana's warning additional gravitas. They could not trust him.

"Just because we share the same father does not make you family, Ares." Diana growled, her jaw set. Nyota had never seen Diana quite like this. She was as taut as the lasso, tension evident in her muscles and her razor-sharp gaze focused on the man in her custody. "I should have known..." She said, a bit regretful. She shook her head ruefully. "I should have known you would have orchestrated such strife across the galaxy. You've been behind the Romulan Empire and their aggression, haven't you? Have you been steering the Klingons towards war as well?"

Nyota balked. "Diana, are you saying this is the Greek god of war?" Diana hadn't spoken very much about the other gods. Even after Apollo arrived, their conversations had remained on the present, not the past. Yet now, she and Spock stood only a stone's throw away from the great, not-so-mythical architect of earth's turmoil.

"Yes." Diana simply replied, brooking no argument. If Nyota had ever doubted that Diana was a member of some god-like race, she found herself unable to justify those doubts any longer. Nyota simply believed her. It was as simple as breathing. Diana radiated trust and honesty.

So if this was Ares, then she had every reason to warn Spock and Uhura away.

"If this is another member of your family, logic suggests that he could still harm us, even from a reasonable distance." Spock remarked. To the outside observer, he probably seemed typically cool and logical. But, she could hear the faint hint of concern in her lover's voice. She also noticed the nearly imperceptible way that he stepped in front of her and gently steered her back half a step. It wasn't enough to suggest he would shield her, but enough that should Ares try anything, he would bear the brunt of it.

"The Lasso of Hestia is a relic of the gods. It can contain him in this state." Diana stated. "At least, it did when I last saw you, brother. When he returned to Man's World, dealt in weapons and orchestrated conflict after conflict. He was known as Ari Buchanan, then, and his powers had diminished. But, how much of the ambrosia of war have you partaken in your days since the Eugenics War? How long have you fostered discord and pain?"

"Far less than you think, Diana. And I would be more than willing to explain it all to you if you simply release me." Ares said with a clipped, cool tone. Nyota could hear exasperation, but it could have easily been for show.

"And let you unleash the hell you did upon the Man's World?" Diana gripped the lasso tighter, and Nyota saw something in the ambassador snap. "Did you finally get what you wanted, brother?" She hissed, tugging him forward a few steps as her voice suddenly hitched higher, revealing the rage simmering within.

Without thinking, Nyota reached for Spock's hand, holding it tight. Diana reminded her of Spock at times: great emotional depth, hidden by the way they chose to see the world. Spock chose to see it in logic and rationality. Diana chose to see the world through her great love and compassion. But, it didn't stop the anger from festering in old wounds.

"How did it feel to finally achieve that which you so desperately sought? Were you _proud_ of the destruction you wrought?" Diana yanked him closer, voice growing louder and louder as she continued. "How did it feel to be responsible for the death of _everything_ I helped create in Man's World? To send hundreds of millions of innocents to their death simply so that you could feed your _gullet!_ How did it _feel_ , warmonger?!" When Ares didn't answer her, Diana finally gripped at his tunic and lifted him clear off the ground. " _I compel you to tell the truth._ "

The ferocity, the ring of truth and authority in her voice was unlike anything Nyota had ever heard. She even felt Spock's fingers clasp around hers a little tighter. It had been enough to strike him as well.

When Ares spoke, compelled by either the lasso or Diana, that air of cleverness and calm had left him. He sounded hollowed. "I hated myself…." He said softly, staring back at Diana. "Because I wasn't there to make sure they did it _right_."

Diana pulled back, letting him go as she recoiled with nothing less than revulsion. "What?" The word left her mouth as a whisper, but it was chilled as Nyota felt.

Ares caught himself, grabbing at the lasso as it to both steady his balance and to keep Diana's attention on him. "I survive on war, Diana. I've brought many a society to the brink of destruction, only to pull them back so that they would give me what I needed. I want _endless_ conflict, and instead, the foolish idiots bombed themselves into wanting _peace._ By the time humanity reached that point, we were long gone. Our dear sister _Athena_ \- " He drew the name out like it turned to ash in his mouth. "Decided that should we linger on Earth much longer, we would all be forgotten. By the time the Augments crafted their war, I was already busy creating what I thought would be the perfect planet of worshippers when their arms race brought them to mutually assured destruction. No worshippers, no godhood."

Nyota's heart twisted painfully as she suddenly remembered the way Apollo had spoken about worship, about needing followers. There had been such disdain, such self-loathing. And for Ares… it seemed to be nothing but petulance and wounded pride. He didn't care for humanity, but only for what it could do for him.

"You… you _monster._ " The words slipped from Nyota's mouth before she could stop herself. "You destroyed an entire civilization and all you care about is how they would have benefitted you?"

Ares turned his gaze to hers. It had been a mistake to call him out, as now he had given her a smile that held no warmth, only flippant disregard. "Do you care about every ant you crush underfoot, Nyota Uhura? It's a simple hazard of the genetics, my dear. All gods cannot survive without worship. Well…" He paused, shrugging and turning back to Diana. "Almost all gods."

Diana's hand that held the lasso started to lower to her side, giving a bit of slack but not entirely freeing him. "If I thought I could kill you and make it stick, I would." She finally said, a dark edge in her voice suggesting once against that Amazons did not simply train in the art of war to understand the warrior, but because they were just as capable of rendering judgement.

"You killed him once before?" Spock asked. He had loosened his grip on her fingers, but did not pull away. He was still worried.

Diana nodded. "To end Man's first World War. But, as long as there is blood lust among mortals…" She closed her eyes for a moment. "There will always be a god of war."

"Yes, well, I have Dr. Minerva and yourself to thank for that.. How is she, by the way?" The name he used made Diana visibly flinch. Whoever she was, Dr. Minerva was a painful association for her. "I never truly thanked her for bringing you to that temple of Morpheus. I would have helped her, freed her from the curse of the cheetah that Urzkartaga inflicted upon her, but she didn't care for the terms of my arrangement - "

Diana's fist connected with his jaw and sent the god staggering to his knees. "You will keep Barbara Ann out of this. Tell me _why_ you're here."

Ares shook his head, as if the blow had affected him more than he wanted to admit. "I learned my lesson after my failed experiment. I moved to Eminiar VII, because I needed to rebuild my power base." He sighed, tugging at the lasso. "Release me, Diana, I've no wish to bore you with needless details."

Diana's gripped tightened once more on the lasso, and she tugged him upwards so that he had to raise up on his knees. "Then, bore me. If you truly have been away from earth for two centuries, then you will explain why you risk discovery by starting a war with the Federation and the Romulans."

Ares huffed, glancing back at the two Federation officers as if they would somehow help him. "They would know just as well as I could tell you. After all, the _Enterprise_ is the reason I shifted my attention to the Klingons."

Spock had put the pieces together before she had, but Nyota had recognized the name of the planet. She couldn't remember why until he spoke. "Eminiar VII was engaged in a computer-simulated war with its neighboring planet, Vendikar. Neither side actually fought, but casualties were executed through a selection process. When the _Enterprise_ arrived to the planet in 2261, the captain destroyed the computer hubs that dictated the outcome of simulated battles. The Eminiarians and Vendikarians were forced to take a cease fire, lest an actual conflict break out once more." Spock quirked an eyebrow, scrutinizing Ares. "You take responsibility for the conflict?"

"Gladly, Mister Spock." Ares said with a chuckle. "It was the perfect ritual, you see. No actual concept of peace to be achieved, and hundreds of millions of mortals dying in the name of war. My war. And it was truly endless. The algorithms were designed to keep a maintainable population on both planets and feed my power. Then, you had to go and ruin it all, and I was forced to find something new."

"You are truly deranged." Diana's voice seemed nearly sympathetic. Nearly.

"I am the god of war." Ares laughed. "I tried to reason with you, but you never understood. All mortals _need_ conflict. It is how they grow, and in turn, I must lead them to that greener pasture."

"A remarkably short-sighted view for such a long-lived individual." Spock responded with an edge of emotion to his voice. Nyota rested her hand on his back for a moment. "What is your reasoning for infiltrating the Klingon Empire? Another endless war?"

"Yes, but on a more internal scale. Klingons already worship honor and battle, so I've been drumming up conflict between the Great Houses. They don't want this peace accord with the Federation because the two factions involved were fighting each other. I don't know why the Romulans turned on them." He motioned to the lasso. "I'm telling you the truth, Diana, I've nothing to do with it. Romulans are treacherous, difficult to lure into the positions I need them to be for a good war."

Nyota couldn't tell if Diana necessarily believed him, but she didn't get a chance to question him more.

Footsteps were rapidly approaching, smatterings of Klingon bouncing off the alley walls. The delegation had caught up and would be here any moment.

"Even if I believed you, why kill the ambassador?"

Ares went from calm to slightly more panicked as the footsteps approached. "I didn't. But, if you don't release me, they will realize who I am. Do you know what Klingons do to their gods, Diana?"

Nyota scoffed. "The Klingons killed their gods. You're running."

Ares turned towards Uhura again, but this time, there was no panic. Only petulant anger that suggested he was far less reasonable than he pretended to be. "I was letting my work play out. I wasn't _running._ " He cast one more glance back at Diana, who seemed unmoved by his plea. "What's two centuries amongst immortals, Diana? You know that they can't kill me. And if they see what you can do, your precious chance for peace will be gone."

Diana wavered, then finally pulled the lasso from its magical hold. No sooner than the golden shimmer faded from the rope back on her waist, Ares had changed from the human man they'd been talking to back to the non-descript Klingon warrior.

The rest of the delegation, Colonel Worf at the lead of the pack, came pouring out into the alleyways, disruptors held high.

Motar, clearly incensed, raised his hand and pointed at Diana, snarling as he did so. "Take the Federation _petaQ_ into custody! She killed the Commander!"

* * *

The hearing did not seem to be going in Jim's favor. To Commander Ayala's credit, his advocate had done one helluva job questioning his crew. Their testimony spoke both to their character and to his.

But, Jim could read a room, and so far, he wasn't too fond of what he saw on those Admiral's faces. After all, they'd been ready to hand him the Vice Admiral position after the incident with Edison. But, by encouraging, or even remotely supporting Diana's plan to free the slaves, there was a very real chance that any alliance with the Klingons had gone south. They would be looking for a scapegoat.

None of that was entirely surprising. Jim knew the score on this kind of thing. What was surprising was who seemed to be ready to launch him out of a torpedo tube into demotion and court martial: Admiral Kent.

Jim couldn't tell what Conner's play was here. Even now, as Jim stood before the entire admiralty board, prepared to deliver his closing statement before waiting for their decision, he couldn't tell what the admiral wanted from him. Not for the first time since Jaylah had testified, Jim wondered if he had been played.

He'd always considered that Admiral Kent was an ally to Starfleet and to Diana, but Jim was starting to wonder if his loyalty to family was winning out. Maybe it had been misplaced guilt that he had held back on information about the Eugenics War. Maybe it was that he simply didn't think Jim had Diana's best interests at heart, or wasn't a captain worthy of his command.

But, Jim didn't think that was it.

He could tell that there was some level of political maneuvering happening among those faces before him. Something - or someone - was out of place. But, what was it?

Jim found himself watching Admiral Cale as she took a seat beside Conner.

He'd never seen her before the hearing. Her insignia was indicative of Starfleet Intelligence, but Conner had never suggested any sort of affinity for Marcus's old position. So, why were they chummy _now_? And more importantly, why would she care about Jim's career? What possible reason could Conner have for getting closer to Starfleet Intelligence that Diana would care about?

The realization struck him with the same force as the gavel hit the table before the Fleet Admiral.

"This hearing is called to order." The Fleet Admiral remarked.

He reeled for a moment .Admiral Hackett was missing. The only admiral outside of Kent who had had any interaction with Diana, who had custody of Vanessa Katalepis and had been avoiding the ambassador for weeks.

And a new Intelligence Admiral was there in his place.

 _What_ was going on?

"Captain Kirk," The Fleet Admiral said his name with such precision, he turned to face her with momentarily wide eyes. "You have asked to address the admiralty board before we render our decision. Your request has been granted. Proceed."

He stared at her for another long moment before he blinked away his stupor, turning to focus on the admirals before him. He'd had an hour or so to prepare his remarks. Even after Sulu, Bones and Scotty had testified, Jim had found himself constantly circling back to Jaylah's risky reprimand. It could have cost her career, but she'd demanded their attention nonetheless.

It reminded him very poignantly of Diana, a lifetime away, telling off the war council with ease.

She had been right then. Jaylah was right now. And this time, Jim wasn't going to sit back and let the admirals steamroll over him.

"Thank you, Fleet Admiral." Jim finally began. Thankfully, although he was rattled, he was nothing but honest respect and cool composure to the outside observer. "Admirals, as you know, my career in Starfleet began in a less than relaxed fashion. I thought I was signing up for adventure and a chance to make a name for myself. But, that's not what it means to be the captain of a starship. Chris Pike taught me that to be a captain means sacrifice, it means selflessness, and it means bravery even in the face of certain death. And not because there's glory in it: but, because that's what is necessary for the greater good.

"It means saving lives, those of my crew and those who need help but may not be able to ask for it." Jim took a long, hard look around the room. As he continued, he found himself suddenly aware of the fact that Hackett wasn't the only face missing from the room. There were _several_ new admirals on the board. While he had been off on the _Enterprise_ 's new tour, there had been a changing of the guard. Subtle, but impossible to miss. If he had suddenly lost favor with the admiralty board, he'd have to play things by the books. He'd have to make sure his plea was ironclad and directly in line with Starfleet's charter.

"Before this hearing, I gave you my full records on the Orion Pirate Syndicate." He continued, calculating new words on the fly, but making it seem as if he'd rehearsed it for days. "And you have the full extent of every mission I've had with Ambassador Prince. I know it would be easy to say that I should have stopped the Ambassador or worse, that I should have left Jaylah. I understand the _political_ ramifications of my decision, but I have never thought twice about helping people. If we're meant to be a beacon of light, exploring the final frontier, then that means we have to be the stewards of that gift. What good is the Federation if we ignore our principles in order to curry political favor with the Klingons?

"If you want to demote me, I will accept that decision, just as I accepted it when I interfered on Nibiru. But, the Prime Directive isn't at play here. The Orion Syndicate are not only warp-capable, they run circles around our ships. We don't have a military advantage over them, and maybe we shouldn't. Because we're not a military organization. We were asked to keep the peace, but if keeping the peace means it's only easier to hear the screams of those suffering in that deafening silence of space, then maybe we don't deserve the guardianship we've accepted." Jim spotted one of the admirals he didn't recognize. He seemed a little less hostile than he had a moment ago. It seemed to be working.

"In my time with the Ambassador, I've had the privilege of seeing and learning about what drove a group of earth's heroes before the Eugenics War." Jim knew it was a calculated risk, turning his attention and addressing his dialogue directly to Conner, but it was the only way that Jim could evaluate the admiral's mindset. "I learned about why the Justice League was formed, and more importantly, I've seen Diana live up to those expectations. She never asks more of anyone than she's willing to give of herself. And if she tells me that people are suffering and we should do something about it, then, I'm sorry. I'm going to do it. Because that's what we're _supposed_ to do.

"Asking me to leave one crewmember behind, or suggesting that I should have extracted her and left thousands of prisoners to a life of slavery and pain isn't what we're _supposed_ to do." Conner seemed unmoved. Jim tried to keep his honest disappointment and worry out of his voice. He wanted to see the best of this situation, but now, he wasn't sure Conner had ever been an ally at all. "And if the races we interact with can't grasp that above all else, Starfleet and the Federation exist to create peaceful coexistence between all races, then we have an obligation to teach them that. And it might take decades - hell, centuries - but if that's not the point of the whole thing…" Jim turned to look at a few other admirals. He focused on one that seemed most attentive. "Then, with all due respect, what is?"

Jim took a moment, both for effect and to make one final determination on how he wanted to steer their thoughts. This was it. If he was going to change his mind, now would be the time. But, there was no turning back now. He clasped his hands in front of him, thinking back to his days in the academy. A few of these admirals had seen him graduate. And the new ones… Jim would learn one way or the other what they were trying to accomplish. Even if he lost his rank today, he wouldn't stop until he understood where Hackett had gone and why all of them were so keen to turn on Jim.

"Now, I've never made it a secret of who I am or why I still sit in that chair." He said at last, careful to keep most of the ego out of his voice. "But, in all honesty, if you don't understand why I chose as a captain to get Jaylah and stop Verex III while there was an opportunity, then I don't know whose career you've been watching. I've been the same kind of captain I was when I walked into the Kobayashi Maru." Jim turned his attention to Admiral Cale, the truly unknown element out of all of this. She had replaced Hackett, and she was a person of interest to Kent. He wanted to know what kind of an officer she was. So, he looked her in the eye and silently dared her to challenge him. "There is no such thing as a no-win scenario, and there's no such thing as a worthless rescue. If even one person asks for my help, I will always give it. And if that's not who a Starfleet captain should be, then take the ship, reassign my crew. But you will never be able to take the feeling of knowing thousands of people are safe today, because of me. Because I did the right thing."

Cale smirked. Jim felt his jaw set as he did everything in his power to keep his tone professional. But, in that moment, she had set herself apart from the others. She was callous and she didn't care about the _Enterprise_ or its captain.

She just became Jim's priority.

Glancing away from Cale, he cast his gaze around the room one last time as he finished. "I hope that Starfleet's principles haven't changed and I hope you'll review my actions in the spirit in which they were taken. Thank you for your time."

With that, Jim Kirk stepped away from the admirals and walked back out into the hallway. For all he knew, he was walking away from his career.

At this point, there was nothing left to do but wait. Bones and Sulu were waiting for him outside the hearing doors. Presumably, Scotty had talked Jaylah away from the building after her testimony and promised her a few drinks. At least, he certainly hoped so.

"How'd it go?" Bones asked, his expression as cloudy as the San Francisco skyline had been all day.

Jim shrugged, a hand idly reaching into his pocket for his communicator. Again, he should have been worried about himself, but all he wanted to do was call Diana and find out how the negotiations were going. "I've said all I can. Without Diana here to provide any additional testimony, they have everything they're going to get out of it."

"I'm sure they'll rule in your favor, captain." Sulu remarked, ever hopeful.

Jim wasn't so sure he could agree. Instead, he just nodded and stepped away from them, grabbing his communicator. Flipping it open, he keyed it for long-range transmission via earth's subspace relays, fully prepared to level with Diana.

But, he remembered what she was doing on Khitomer. Those peace accords to lead to an era of peace between the Klingon Empire and the Federation. She had enough on her mind.

She didn't need him right now.

* * *

Diana really needed Jim right now.

Neither Spock nor Uhura knew her past with Ares. Even though she had released him, she didn't trust that he had any interests but his own. At least if she had Jim there, he would know the god's tricks. And he would understand that Diana had no desire to reveal her divine nature or that of Ares. If the Klingons saw their gods as creatures to kill, she had no way of knowing how they would react to her using the lasso.

But, more importantly, Jim really did know her heart. She had not realized how much she'd grown to rely on his counsel, on their debate and healthy need to challenge each other. She had been given the blessing of time with him that she had lacked with Steve.

It seemed that the more she tried to push him away, the more she longed to have him beside her. She was regretting her decision to keep him at arm's length more and more. Her heart had already decided in the months she'd spent getting to know Jim that he was a fixture in her life.

Unfortunately, she had no time to worry about what she did not have. Instead, the three Federation members found themselves surrounded by Klingon ambassadors, intent on drawing blood for the death of their fellow warrior.

"She killed Toproc! With a _female's_ dishonorable weapon! Poison!" Motar was practically howling, disdain dripping from his lips.

Worf seemed less convinced, and rightly so. He had been with them leading up to the banquet and knew that Diana's intentions were sound. She had felt no dishonesty in the man, only a sincere belief that the Empire be made stronger through the alliance. They had barely begun to discuss terms when she'd been pulled into a fight, and would have had no opportunity to poison the commander.

"I have no reason to poison one of your own." Diana said, almost exasperated that she had to defend herself in that moment. "I want this treaty, I want these accords to succeed."

"Then why do you have Fe'kor with you?" Worf asked, pointing to Ares. Of course, since he was now in the same guise before the lasso had touched him, it made sense that the Colonel knew him as one of his delegation. "How can we trust you when you pursue a Klingon and shirk your honorable combat?"

"She has no honor, she is a human!" Motar snarled. "We never should have trusted them!"

Diana knew she was running out of time. If she was to salvage any hope for peace, she would have to think quickly, regardless of the risk. Worf had said it himself: subterfuge was not very Klingon. So, if there was a reason someone wanted to kill Torpoc, then they would not want their honor challenged. "Search my person, but you will find nothing of this poison you claim was given to him."

Worf frowned, clearly at an impasse. "Klingon law expects all warriors to be honorable in the face of such treachery. It is not our duty to prove your innocence for you. You are assumed guilty."

"That is highly illogical, as one cannot prove that they do not have an implement of a crime if they never held possession of it in the first place." Not for the first time, Spock's patience with Klingon tradition seemed to be wearing thin. Diana, of course, agreed with his impeccable logic, yet she saw no way to force the already obstinate Klingons into Federation principles of justice.

"Prove you are not guilty, or suffer the punishment." Worf said, facing Diana as if Spock had never spoken.

Again, she wished for Jim's presence, if only for the insight he held as a spy in both lives. Instead, she tried to think as he would.

A spy would have known that Klingons did not rely on an assumption of innocence. They would most certainly turn down any other option other than the most Klingon of actions, in an attempt to prove they were part of the group.

Diana would have to play that game better than they could.

"Then, I will prove my innocence in honorable combat."

Uhura and Spock both seemed disturbed by that. Ares - or as he was known now, Fe'kor - seemed unfazed.

Diana walked over to Motar, even as the Klingons trained their disruptor rifles on her. "You challenged me before, and I accepted. If I prove that I am the superior warrior, then take my word as honorable. I will then help locate the true culprit. And if I lose, then you may render your judgement."

Motar looked her over as if she was something on the bottom of his boot. Considering the reputation of Klingon women as fierce warriors in their own right, Diana had hoped for at least a modicum of respect.

"Very well." He growled, clenching and unclenching his fist at his side. "Prepare yourself, human. You may wear armor like a Klingon, but you will die just as the same, and no Klingon will care to send your soul to _Sto-vo-kor_."

Diana simply quirked an eyebrow. "We shall see."

* * *

Several minutes later, they had returned to the banquet table. A couple of warriors had pulled Toproc's body - quite unceremoniously - off of the table and into a medical building. As others had cleared a space in the courtyard for a more formal combat challenge, Diana caught sight of Spock pulling the blood pie and _gagh_ from the table setting in front of the fallen commander. She smiled at him, relieved that in all of this chaos, the science officer was still searching for an explanation. He pulled his tricorder, scanning the plates as the rest of the colony seemed to approach, eager for the fight.

Now, Diana and Motar stood face to face, following the practice for honorable combat by Klingon law.

Colonel Worf approached her with _bat'leth_ in hand, his expression severe and deeply concerned. "This _bat'leth_ has been in my family for eight generations. If you are innocent, it will serve you well. If not, you will die. The combat is to the death."

Diana nodded, touched by the trust he had placed in her, then gently took the weapon from him. She wanted to reaffirm her innocence to him, to remind him that poison was not a weapon she would ever consider. But, she knew better. He didn't need her explanations. He needed her actions. "Any advice?"

Worf considered her a moment, then finally offered: "Do not think of it as a weapon. Make it part of your hand, part of your arm. Make it part of you."

Diana took the _bat'leth_ from Worf and gripped it tightly in her hands. It was a curious, heavy weapon that reminded her of several others he had seen over the years. The fighting style, however, was still a relative mystery to her. Her understanding of Klingon fighting techniques was the breadth of one Klingon opera and a handful of lectures on general fighting technique. Worf could offer her no more than he had. "Thank you, Colonel.."

The remaining two Klingon ambassadors were watching Motar, as if he was now the only obstacle between them and what they saw as the guilty party. Gorkon seemed quite collected. For a Klingon, he was remarkably quiet and thoughtful. As the governor of Khitomer, he was largely disinterested in political infighting, and seemed more focused on the stability of his colony.

Kor was the picture of disquiet. He had not spoken to Diana once since the barest of pleasantries, but he seemed uniquely unsettled by the entire challenge. It would have been easy to assume that as the only Klingon without forehead ridges, he could have had reason to be resentful of his fellow ambassadors. But, Diana sensed nothing but truth and an honest desire for honor. If anything, she felt as if he had not spoken to her because he didn't think it was his place.

Colonel Worf stepped away, leaving her to her fate. She knew Uhura and Spock stood to her left at the front of the crowd. She spared a glance their way, offering them both a smile.

"Good luck, Diana." Uhura simply remarked, voicing perhaps what they were both thinking.

She nodded, holding the weapon aloft in one hand by its center grip. "Thank you, sister, but, I need no luck, only wisdom."

Motar laughed as she stared at the weapon in curiosity. "This will be a short fight if you cannot defend yourself."

Diana simply glanced up at him, flipping the weapon into a ready position to mimic Motar's. The Amazons of Themyscira had trained in every fighting style known to ancient man. Diana had expanded upon that knowledge in over a century of combat across the earth. The Klingons thought themselves brutal, Diana knew humans could be savage. And in all cases, to learn how to temper that savagery, she needed only let him teach her how to fight with his own technique.

Worf barked out the order to begin and Diana immediately dropped into a fighting stance.

Motar moved the weapon effortlessly in his hands with a discipline and slow ease. She mimicked him, watching his footing, what _he_ was watching, and how he was switching his grip as he swung the weapon methodically. He executed the art of the _bat'leth_ as any capable warrior would, but he did not press any advantage. Instead, he was patient to circle her until he was ready.

The crowd was lusting for blood, but they didn't seem particular as to where it came from.

He struck, testing her defenses. She blocked him with ease, again and again, as he tested each of her positions. The force of his blows were solid and rattled through her bones. It felt like taking blows from Artemis. And just as she had learned over countless days on the training grounds, she would study and measure Motar's actions. She had limited knowledge of the combat style, but from what she had seen, he seemed adept. If she expected to best him, she would have to learn where his technique ended and his instinct began.

Motar began to press a true attack. Diana watched the way he spun the blade. Deadly from all of its points and blades, the _bat'leth_ made long arcs and extended the graceful movement of a slash to twice the length of his arm. It was both crescent sword and bo staff and even more deadly.

Diana couldn't afford to reveal her abilities to their fullest. If she was to establish that a Federation ambassador could be innocent by Klingon law, then she could not give any suggestion that she wasn't more than an above average human.

She rolled away from a particularly quick swipe at her stomach, then brought her _bat'leth_ up to block Motar's as he drove it down towards her chest. She buckled for a moment, keeping the blades locked. She had studied the formations he used, the points he wanted to attack.

If combat was art, then Diana was a maestro, capable of sculpting like Donatello and painting frescos to make Michaelangelo cry. Motar simply could not live as many lives as she, to learn as many disciplines.

She had treated time as her enemy these last few weeks.

This reminded her that in this, time had been her greatest ally.

Diana pivoted his _bat'leth_ away, nearly wresting it from his grip entirely. She rolled again, using the lower perspective to her advantage to whirl her blade around, swinging for his feet.

He barely jumped out of the way, but not before her blade struck at his calf, digging deep.

Motar howled and the crowd responded in kind. Jeers and shouts in the gutteral Klingon tongue urged him to recover his footing and swing his _bat'leth_ once more, slipping into the ready stance, reassessing his opponent. He was more cautious than she expected a Klingon warrior to be. They were quick to anger, yet he was clearly trying to calculate moves ahead.

Diana spun her _bat'leth_ in hand, watching him as she swung a few careful, graceful arcs of her own towards him. Motar feinted to the left, but she noticed the ruse and pivoted accordingly. To her surprise and to her honest battle-driven delight, he actually anticipated the move. His _bat'leth_ sliced across her arm with one of the smaller curves in the blade.

She groaned, gritting her teeth, then kicked him away. She ignored the warm trickle of blood down her arm. She was immortal, not impervious. Few blades had been strong enough to actually pierce her skin, but the _bat'leth_ was made of some metal not of earth. She did not want to consider how that might spin the battle out of her favor.

Motar had expected that she would dodge. He wasn't thinking like a Klingon. She glanced down at his leg to see that fabric was sticking to the back of his calf. He was bleeding, slightly nursing the wound.

Diana smirked. Now, it was her turn.

The blade tumbled over her hands as she began to land blow after blow against the other weapon. She couldn't seem to find an opening, but she wasn't necessarily looking for one. She would wear him down, keep him from thinking too much about strategy. If Klingons were so quick to anger, she could use that to her advantage.

She found the point where his instinct and his technique met. She pressed on, expecting instinct to lead to anger and sloppy, brutal fighting as she had seen just in the street brawls of Khitomer.

Instead… the actual _technique_ changed.

It was subtle, but to a master of martial arts like Diana, impossible to ignore. To watch Motar pivot on his heel and grip the _bat'leth_ to rest against the back of his arm had been to watch a samurai suddenly drop into the fighting stance of a Roman Legionnaire. He had gone taut, no longer as fluid.

It was familiar. Eerily so. Diana's eyes narrowed as she found herself considering where she had fought someone with such a rigid, militaristic style in the past.

It reminded her of her brief encounters with…

No. It couldn't be.

Motar made a move to slash at her head, and she ducked again. When he came at her once more, this time for jab at her chest, she leaned back, just out of reach.

He was watching for her sword hand. She had been favoring it since the beginning of the fight without thinking, as it was easier to learn the new technique.

Diana reacted in a microsecond.

She pivoted and executed one smooth move that most Klingon warriors would have considered a mastery technique. She switched her grip and knocked his weapon off to his right, leaving him wildly exposed. She rolled the back of the _bat'leth_ along the soft underside of her arm. It rolled up and over, allowing her to catch the grip for the right hand in her left. With a determined cry, Diana slashed her weapon forward, cleanly ripping open his armor and sending him crashing to the floor.

Before he could recover, she kicked his weapon from his hand and firmly planted a boot upon his now wounded chest. "I have bested you." She said, swinging the _bat'leth_ until its curve rested just against his neck. "Yield," she breathed, much to the displeasure of the surrounding Klingons.

To die honorably was the greatest blessing a Klingon could ask for. She expected him to refuse to yield in the hopes that he would reach _Sto-vo-kor._

Diana didn't care for that solution, but if Worf could not intercede, she was prepared for it.

When he didn't answer, she moved the _bat'leth_ in a second, swiping the tip of her blade across his cheek. It was then that she saw something she had not been able to discern against the black fabric on his leg.

She expected to draw an answer from him in the droplets of blood and a scar to remind him of his defeat. But, those droplets were not the lavender hue of Klingon blood.

Motar was bleeding _green_.

Diana pulled her boot away. Her golden greaves were in a quickly pooling emerald green puddle on his chest. The cut had been fairly deep, but not so deeply for a Klingon. But, this was not iron-based blood. The only races that bled green were copper-based. Vulcans and…

"He's a Romulan." Diana said, loud enough for the crowd to hear. To illustrate her point, she held up her _bat'leth_ , which bore the blood splatter to match her greaves.

The crowd was audibly shocked. From the circle of spectators, she could hear Commander Kor, of all of them, shout: "We have a Romulan spy in our midst!"

She glanced up, looking to Worf for assistance. "You are being manipulated - "

"Diana! Stop him!" Spock's voice cut through the din of angry Klingon voices just quickly enough for her to look down at Motar - or whoever he was.

He had his hand to his mouth, as if he was gasping in fear for being discovered.

Only his pupils suddenly dilated, and he began to shake.

"No!" She cried, dropping to her knees. She quickly ripped his hand away. He began to foam at the mouth and she quickly tried to pry his lips open, to see if she could pull whatever fast-acting agent he had ingested. "No, no, do not do this! Why are you here? Who sent you?!" It was no use. He was in the throes of some chemical. Motar's eyes, wracked with pain, began to fade.

Worf and Spock were at her side as Motar faded away.

Diana glanced up at them, at a loss.

Beside them, a small vial slipped from under Motar's sleeve and rolled down his now limp hand.


	40. The Bridge: Act IV

**The Bridge: Act IV**

The Klingon culture did not lend itself to a fondness for thorough forensic investigation. If Spock had not taken the opportunity to retrieve the _rokeg_ blood pie and _gagh_ that Motar and Torpoc had argued over earlier in the meal, he was certain that the truth of the murder would be left to blood-soaked sands of the rock garden where Diana and Motar had engaged in combat.

Spock, of course, was no stranger to such honor-bound and ritual combat. Having gone through _pon farr_ himself, he had once engaged in _koon-ut-kal-if-fee_ and fought for a mate, long before his commission aboard the _Enterprise_ or his relationship with Nyota. For a Vulcan, such a torrent of emotion was akin to madness: possession and rage swirled into a need for something completely intangible.

Klingons illogically chose to exist in such an emotional space, and therefore did not scrutinize their surroundings nearly to Spock's satisfaction. Klingons were among the greatest warriors in the galaxy, but not the most adept at subterfuge or investigation. As their focus had been on the combat unfolding before them, he had been given ample time to run several analyses on the two plates of food while Diana fought for her honor, and presumably any attempt at peace.

The results would take time to process and finalize, so he had focused his attention on the battle as Diana took a slice to her arm. Nyota gasped beside him, but had followed it up with a rousing cry of:

"Kick his ass, Diana!"

When Spock caught her eye, he simply quirked his eyebrow in amusement at her.

 _Bat'leths_ clashed once more, and Motar roared in pain ahead of them. Spock's attention was pulled back to the duel.

At the same time that Diana noted the change in Motar's technique, so did Spock.

" _Tal shaya…_ " He muttered, recognizing the ancient Vulcan form of martial arts. As Motar continued to fight, clearly on the defensive, Spock's eyebrow quirked even higher.

Nyota recognized the words, but as she was not a tactical expert, he was not surprised when she turned to face him. "Vulcan martial arts? Why would a Klingon utilize _Vulcan_ techniques?"

Spock's brow furrowed as Diana executed a maneuver to switch her grip. "That particular style of martial combat is not exclusive to the Vulcan people. I fear that there is greater subterfuge at work than we initially theorized." Diana's next blow struck across Motar's broad chest. The blow would have barely scratched a Klingon.

When Diana's _bat'leth_ came away tinged with green flecks, unnoticed by the crowd but not by Spock's more scrutinous gaze, he felt the various clues slide into place, as if in a game of _kal-toh,_ where perfect harmonyhad been achieved.

He now understood what had happened to the ambassador, and he had a plausible explanation as to the motive as well.

As Diana recognized Motar's true identity as well, holding her _bat'leth_ to the crowd, Spock was watching the fallen man. A Romulan. A spy. An assassin. Now that he had been discovered, he would…

He would not be taken alive. Spock noticed Motar's hand move towards his mouth too late. He fought to warn her, but his shouts were too late.

Now, as he stood alongside Colonel Worf and Diana, they had lost their opportunity to ask the identity of the Romulan.

Gorkon approached them, Kor right alongside him looking quite irate. Given that he did not possess the same physical intimidation as his fellow ambassadors, his emotional response was more than adequate to command respect regardless.

"A Romulan. I fought with Motar on Phaedus IV. How could he possibly be a _Romulan?_ " Kor's perplexity was understandable, but his anger was misdirected. He was still addressing Diana and not the remaining ambassadors of the Klingon delegation.

"I believe that I can offer an explanation, Commander." Spock said, taking a careful step to place himself between the Klingons and Diana. Without taking his eyes off of Kor, he knelt down on the other side of Motar before pulling his tricorder. "I believe that this Romulan spy is responsible for the death of Commander Torpoc and manufactured this situation so that he could throw suspicion off of himself."

"Impossible!" Kor said, skeptical and incensed. "Why would he do such a thing? Motar has earned his honor in many battles. He and Torpoc were in negotiations before! With the Ferengi! With the Orion Syndicate!"

Diana spoke up next. The Orion Syndicate had been a point of interest for her since their return from Verex III. "The Orion Syndicate that sold Torpoc slaves." She reminded them.

Kor's expression reflected a moment of hesitation.

Spock chose to press that advantage. "Was the Orion Syndicate less affable towards Torpoc upon his last trip to Verex III?"

"We had an… incident the last time Torpoc and Motar went to the Syndicate. They wished for a great deal more in currency for the next trade."

Colonel Worf replied with a growl. "Like the Ferengi."

Nyota had joined them, no longer content to remain on the sidelines. "Since when did the Klingons negotiate with the Ferengi?"

Worf frowned, turning to face her. "We are not. But, we have… attempted to secure an agreement for some of the Ferengi's more advanced technology. The negotiations broke down when they killed one of our merchants."

Spock stood, facing the Colonel to ensure his full cooperation and attention. He recalled a novel that he had read in his early Starfleet Academy days. In the time leading up to Cold War between the Federation and the Klingons, it had been important to understand how spies operated. In such courses, his human professor focused on both the reality of tactics and the "drama" of the spy game. As he had grown, Spock had learned that there was as much value in the theatre as the facts.

"This has occurred before? A Klingon delegate killed while negotiating with potential allies?"

Gorkon shrugged it off. He was such a calm man compared to his fellow delegates. In Spock's estimation, that meant he was more calculating than he wished to reveal. "Klingons intimidate weaker species. We are superior, and that makes us potential targets for such dishonorable action."

He had not stated overtly, but suggested that the Ferengi had died similarly. And Worf had drawn the unspoken conclusion that the Orion Syndicate had had a similar scenario.

"An old earth philosophy dictates that 'Once is chance, twice is happenstance, and three times is enemy action.' In the dealings with the Syndicate and the Ferengi, was a member of their rival delegation found guilty by…" Spock motioned to the sand around him. "Similar investigative means?"

Kor considered his words carefully before he finally offered, his anger muted now. He seemed to understand Spock's inference and knew that whatever he was about to say would confirm that. "Yes. The two Commanders were killed, and…" Kor paused, glancing down at the body as the realization struck him. " _Motar_ stood up to fight the other delegates in honorable combat when they denied any involvement. Because it is impossible for a Klingon to poison another one. To do so would be a great dishonor to both parties. A Klingon who is killed by poison is dishonored, his soul sent to _Grethor_ until another warrior dedicates a great victory in his name. And the poisoner loses his honor for choosing not to kill with honor or valor."

While Diana had clearly taken Kor's nervousness around her as a sign of hostility, one she had voiced during the banquet, Spock had seen it for what it was: Kor was a Klingon who believed in his old traditions, the old houses. An alliance with the Federation would have been seen as highly controversial and could disrupt the tumultuous relationships between the Great Houses. But, he was not opposed to it. Only cautious.

"Then, in this case, we have established a pattern in Motar's actions." Spock remarked. He held up his tricorder, reading the results as the ambassadors, surprisingly, remained quiet. "I believe I now have a theory as to what has occurred here, but I am afraid it may only render more questions than answers."

Diana finally rose to her feet at the suggestion of a solution to the immediate problem. "Then, let's hear what you have been able to discern, Commander Spock. I, for one, would like to reaffirm that we have come to this negotiation by honest means, and would not dishonor our potential allies by murder."

He could tell her words were for the benefit of the delegation, not the two Federation officers present with her. Nevertheless, he appreciated the sentiment.

"I took samples of both the platter of _gagh_ and the _Rokeg_ blood pie that Commander Torpoc had been eating shortly before his death. He was poisoned with Felodesine, an incredibly potent drug that Starfleet Medical has virtually no research on." Spock motioned to his tricorder to show the results to any of the ambassadors who wished to view it. Kor took him up on the offer, walking over and gripping it with both hands so he could read the results as Spock continued. "Felodesine works similarly to arsenic on humans and other various iron-based species. However, as Klingons possess less oxygen in their bloodstream than humans and do not produce the enzyme pyruvate dehydrogenase, arsenic would not work to bind the enzyme and cause quick death. However, Felodesine does allow for a similar effect, which causes significant hemorrhaging of the blood through any available orifice." Spock took his tricorder back before he turned to Nyota, who had picked up the nearly empty vial in Motar's limp hand. "In copper-based lifeforms, it prevents oxygenation of the blood, much like cyanide. Therefore, it causes nearly instantaneous death for Vulcans and Romulans."

Nyota held up the vial, glancing up at Spock with visible concern. He had not meant to alarm her, but he knew that she would immediately be concerned that he had been exposed.

"As Vulcans are vegetarians," Spock said to both allay Nyota's fears and to continue his explanation, "I would not have eaten _gagh_ and therefore was not at risk for exposure. Nor could I give away Motar's ruse."

"But, how would he poison Torpoc without poisoning anyone else?" Gorkon finally asked. "And why kill him in particular?"

"I do not believe he was the primary target." Spock glanced over at Diana, who was watching him with rapt attention. "I believe the end result, Ambassador, was to have you suffer the same fate as Orion and Ferengi merchants before."

"He poisoned Torpoc to throw suspicion on the Federation, then would challenge me. Only, I am a better combatant than he is." Diana nodded, considering the theory. "He was quite a skilled combatant. I can see how anyone else would fall to him. He had no way of knowing I was… above average."

"But, going back to Governor Gorkon's point," Nyota said, holding up the vial for emphasis. "How did he poison Torpoc without poisoning the rest of us?"

"He created a diversion." Spock simply replied. "During the banquet, he began to argue with Torpoc over who would eat the rest of the _gagh_. As the serpent worms are also iron-based, he could not risk poisoning the platter too soon, or they would have stopped moving."

"And no one eats dead _gagh_." Kor remarked, finally stepping away again. There was no anger left in him, it seemed. Only a dark, deep worry. Spock's theory had shaken him to his core. The notion that a Romulan spy had been so close to vital negotiations for so long would certainly not sit well.

"Precisely." Spock said in agreement. "I believe that Diana may have unintentionally played into his hands by providing the distraction of the _Rokeg_ blood pie. While Torpoc was arguing with her, Motar could have slipped the feledosine into the plate just before Torpoc's last few bites. I have checked the blood pie as well, and the poison was not present. Then, he challenged the ambassador to create a sense of tension and that Diana was 'dishonorable' while allowing the poison to work. I believe that this man is one of the Tal Shiar, the Romulan secret police, and as such, they have been working to isolate you from potential allies while they turn to attack you."

Silence fell as Spock allowed the full breadth of the situation to settle with the ambassadors. By now, many of the warriors had shooed off the remainder of the colonists, but Spock could see young Mogh watching intently. His eyes were still on Motar's body, as if he could understand the great game of spycraft just in the dead man's surgically crafted forehead ridges.

Gorkon seemed genuinely displeased, but had nothing to offer but a solemn oath in Klingon.

It was Commander Kor who spoke up. In hindsight, it was logical that he would be the one to take a stand. As a man of honor and great tradition, this was highly unfortunate and distasteful.

"We cannot craft any Peace Accords today. The Khitomer Accords will not be drafted today, nor will they be signed tomorrow." Kor finally spoke, dark and foreboding, but full of gravitas that suggested nothing but respect for them. He was not speaking to Spock, either. He had turned to face Diana. "This…. Romulan _petaQ_ has sullied the Great Houses of Qo'nos. The Houses will be in shambles, and most of all, any peace accords drawn up today will be seen as anything _but_ honorable given the death of one of our own."

"No, please do not give up on peace. It _is_ achievable. We can be allies, you do not have to leave things this way." Diana's emotional state was quite overt. She, at times, could suppress her emotions like any Vulcan, but he knew her to be as emotional and vibrant as Nyota. In this moment, he could feel the pain in her heart as if it were his own.

"But, they _must_ , Ambassador Prince." Kor finally barked, his voice brooking no argument. "If the Romulans have eyes and ears everywhere, then we cannot help the Federation until we help ourselves. I will not see the great Klingon Empire turn on itself. Without honest agreement between the houses, our honor would not match your own." It was clear that even though Spock could sense his distrust, he could also sense… respect for Diana. He was aware that the Federation had come to their negotiations honestly.

"Perhaps we have a foundation, Ambassador." Kor relented.

"And tomorrow, we will build a bridge. When you are ready." Diana said with a sad smile before Kor turned to leave. Gorkon followed him, and soon, even Colonel Worf left them to retrieve his son.

The three of them were alone on the courtyard, blood-soaked sand and a spy beneath them.

"Perhaps it was never possible to succeed, with so many deceptions layered upon one another." Spock offered, not sure who he was attempting to comfort. He reluctantly realized he was trying to comfort himself as much as the others.

Diana sighed, then turned to look at Spock. "Perhaps not. And perhaps, I have been so consumed with seeing time as my enemy that I have forgotten one of the greatest lessons."

"What's that?" Nyota asked beside him.

"Not even Rome was built in a day." Diana replied. After a moment, she took hold of the _bat'leth_ she had left on the ground after the fight and followed after Colonel Worf to return the heirloom.

Spock watched her curiously, ever impressed by her persistence.

When he felt Nyota's arm slip around his, he allowed himself a moment of honest comfort in her touch. Her voice beside him was a soothing caress to the senses. "She's right not to give up. I just hope she figures out the difference between being patient and being reluctant."

"I believe she has already determined that." He could tell that Nyota did not only refer to the negotiations, but rather to Diana's relationship with the captain. If she kept him at arm's' length, it would do neither of them any benefit. She had already heard how he felt on the subject…. Spock glanced down at her. "But, perhaps she only needs to learn what she gains from learning that balance."

Something he refused to acknowledge as instinct or intuition but nevertheless just as persistent told him… Jim would need her. More than perhaps he had ever needed anyone before.

Even if he retained his captaincy. Especially, if he didn't.

* * *

The Admirals had been in deliberation for the better part of the day, and it was beginning to test even Jim's battle-worn patience. As the Admirals deciding what to do with him technically meant the hearing was still in session, he couldn't leave the Starfleet Command building, nor could he leave that floor.

So, the best he could do was get his peace and quiet where he could: An empty briefing room with a view that looked towards the Golden Gate Bridge and past the city below him. It had been years since he'd been grounded like this. To think that after three years in deep space, he had thought he _needed_ Earth to remind him of what to do with his life.

Which was why it shocked the hell out of him that he wasn't nearly as concerned about losing the _Enterprise_ as he thought he would have been. Not to misunderstand, Jim was worried as hell that his ship and his crew might be taken from him, but at least he had to hope Spock would keep the command.

But, he was more worried about what that would mean for his friends… for Diana.

If he wasn't a captain on the _Enterprise_ , how could he justify spending time with Diana if she wasn't ready for a relationship?

 _Maybe I can be her secretary_ , He thought idly as he finished the glass of water in his hand and watched a few shuttles streak by. _I'm sure there's some karmic justice in that…_

Jim scoffed to himself, hearing the voice of the old generals from the War Council another life away, only with Starfleet uniforms.

 _Who is this man, Ambassador?_

 _He's my secretary?_

 _A secretary who knows advanced Federation ship tactics?_

 _He's a…. Very good secretary._

The thought kept him so amused, Jim missed hearing anyone else walk into the briefing room until the footsteps were nearly to him. He'd expected Bones, there to offer some moral support.

Instead, a white hand held a drink out in front of him, something amber-colored and most likely not regulation.

"Here. For your edge." Jaylah simply said as he turned to look at her and the outstretched drink.

She had to know that for a Starfleet captain to be caught drinking on-duty wouldn't help his case, but at the slight smile on her face… Jim didn't care.

Of all the people to come see him right now, the woman whose rescue had been at the center of his hearing had arrived with a glass of - Jim took a sip - scotch in tow. With a grateful smile, he drained the glass before moving over to the briefing table to set it down.

"I appreciate the gesture, but you didn't have to come." He finally said, turning to face her.

Jaylah was somewhat of an enigma to him. He'd seen her strength countless times on Altamid, but she kept her vulnerabilities well in check. Aside from the brief moments where he saw the fear that Edison's cruelty had instilled in her, Jaylah was as solid as a rock. She was brilliant, charismatic and he knew she'd be an asset to any ship lucky enough to have her. He'd read her dossier before formally putting in for the commission at Kent's insistence. She had already put holotechnology research decades ahead of where it had been. As his chief navigator, he would have a switch hitter on the bridge to help support Scotty, much like Chekov had been.

Provided he was still on the bridge tomorrow.

"We are all worried about you, James T." Jaylah finally said as her way of explanation. "But, I am the reason you are in trouble." She shifted from one foot to the other, then picked at a piece of lint on her gold uniform.

He watched her for a long moment, quietly amused by her. She was worried about him, maybe even felt a little guilty, but she had no reason to be.

Reaching out, Jim rested a hand on her shoulder to pull her attention away from the lint and back to him. "Hey. You didn't do anything wrong, and I don't regret for a second getting you out of there. I promised we'd look out for you, and I meant it. You're part of my crew. Even if you weren't, Diana was right to suggest we take out the outpost from the inside." He had a feeling there was a greater plan in the works at Starfleet, but he didn't feel comfortable voicing that to anyone yet… not even Diana.

"Then why don't your admirals see that? Why do they question everything and try to make this your fault?" Jaylah blurted out, motioning to the closed doors down the hall.

Jim laughed a bit, crossing his arms over his chest and shaking his head. He'd asked himself the same questions for hours now. "If I knew that, I'd be an admiral. But, I may not even be a captain when this is over."

"Then they are fools." She simply said, allowing no room for argument.

Jim cast another glance her way. He reminded her of one of the cats his mom had had when he was a kid. One minute, she was placid and relaxed, and the next she was ready to pounce on whatever rodent happened across her path. She was setting up for the pounce, it seemed.

"Look, I came to Starfleet because of you and Montgomery Scotty. You said it was a good place to be, to be better. To learn how to help people. And if they take your ship because you help people, then…" Jaylah took a deep breath, faltering for a moment. "Then… I go where you go, James T. You and Montgomery Scotty, you are… my crew."

He knew what that word meant to her. He'd heard Scotty's impassioned speech to her, but he'd never heard Jaylah use it quite so… sincerely.

A true smile graced his features at the admission from her. He didn't know what he'd done to deserve her affection, but he was beyond grateful. "Thank you, Jaylah." He leaned forward a bit, lowering his voice to give the air that he was being conspiratorial. "And you're kind of like a little sister, so I appreciate the pep talk."

Jaylah scoffed, taking a step back. "I am not _little_!"

Jim chuckled, but any attempt at an explanation was cut off by someone else entering the briefing room.

Bones looked every bit the storm cloud as he stepped in, brow furrowed and clearly worried. "Jim. They're looking for you."

Whiskey or no, Jim was instantly sobered by the honest concern in his best friend's voice. Times like this, he really wished for Spock's steadying presence. Then again, the last time Jim had lost his command had been because SPock had ratted him out, so… maybe he was better off with Diana.

"Time to face the music." Jim simply remarked, sending Bones a tight smile before he walked past both his ensign and chief medical officer. For now, at least, they were still his crew.

He'd faced inquiries and hearings before, and he'd never had anyone else to rely on except himself and his crew. This time, he found himself wishing he could see Diana's smile, that look in her eye when she was about to take the room by storm. He knew she would have had words of wisdom that would have flowed from her lips like wine from a bottle.

He had a feeling that vintage was working better on the Klingons than it would for Jim right now.

"Jim, if this doesn't go well - " Bones began as he sidled up beside him.

He cut him off with a quick clap on his shoulder. "Don't, Bones. It'll be fine. No matter what, I'll land on my feet." It was part bravado and part false optimism so that he could keep the ever-worrying doctor from doing so. Jim squeezed his shoulder one last time as they reached the door, then pulled away so he could firmly slip his hat back on his head.

Without much aplomb, Jim was led back into the Admiralty Board's meeting room and back to the risen area where he'd testified hours before. He was careful to stand at attention, but he spent a brief moment scanning the faces in the room again. No one looked to be giving him any indication of how they had voted, one way or the other.

Which meant the only one who could give him the answer was the Fleet Admiral.

The gavel struck with an echo through the room. Jim kept his eyes on the Fleet Admiral even as the Bolian stood, her eyes watching Jim with a level of piercing scrutiny he'd started to grow accustomed to in the hearings.

"James Tiberius Kirk, you have been accused of unauthorized use of a Federation vessel for the purposes of espionage and trespass; the reckless endangerment of a Federation ambassador; disobeying a direct order from Commodore Paris; and, dereliction of duty to your five-year deep space mission with the _U.S.S. Enterprise_." The Fleet Admiral rattled off the charges with ease. He wasn't sure if she was trying to get him to squirm under the pressure, but it would take a lot more than that. Besides, the decision had been made. No use churning on it now.

"Our decision was not an easy one," She continued. "Your conduct regarding this incident, while done for admirable reasons, was in direct opposition to the orders you received. You did not have authority to speak for the Federation in this event, yet your own records show that you empowered Ambassador Prince to speak on Starfleet's behalf.

"You ask the Admiralty Board to see past your prior actions on your record and to instead look to your principles and your motivations. But, a Starfleet captain does not operate in a silo. His or her actions create ripples throughout the galaxy, throughout every facet of both Federation politics and galaxy safety." Jim bit the inside of his cheek to keep from objecting. He had a feeling he wouldn't like what he was about to hear.

"The fact is, unlike your actions on Nibiru, you were not reckless. You were calculated. You obtained information from Commodore Paris in order to plan a mission to a hostile territory with only a Federation Ambassador and purposely kept your crew in the dark as to your intentions. Such behavior indicates that you still do not respect for your chain of command…" The other shoe was about to drop. Jim could feel it.

"Only if the chain of command does not respect your crew." The Fleet Admiral's tone shifted. She lost her severe edge, and it began to slowly feel less like a lecture as she continued. "Your actions display a sense of compassion and responsibility to your crew, both past, present and future, that cannot be ignored. Given your actions leading up to, then after the rescue, it is clear that you acted out of concern that a crewmember was in mortal danger. In doing so, you also rescued thousands of displaced people from various Federation allies and membership worlds alike.

"After much careful deliberation, the Admiralty Board has decided to issue a formal reprimand to Ambassador Prince for asking a Starfleet captain to break protocol, but we ultimately feel that your reasoning was sound given the circumstances. Such an action as this cannot happen again, _Captain_ Kirk." The Fleet Admiral paused as the verdict sank in.

Jim was visibly relieved. He exhaled, unaware he'd begun to hold his breath, then shook his head for a moment in disbelief before he regained his composure. "Thank you, Admirals. Thank you all - "

"Please understand that this was not a popular decision. The board was nearly split down the middle. Consider yourself on notice, and any adverse reactions that this incident have on galactic politics will only make things more difficult for your crew when you are beyond Starfleet's home base. You have no chances left. Another unauthorized deviation such as this one, and we will be forced to act." The Fleet Admiral drove the gavel back down two times, then relented. "This hearing is adjourned."

Jim could feel the tension leave his body as if he'd just been doused in cold water. He took another deep breath, pulling his hat off and tucking it under his arm as he ran a hand through his hair, trying to relax and drink in the fact that he was still captain.

When he glanced back up at the admirals, he caught sight of Admirals Kent and Cale exchanging a few words before the woman turned to leave. She seemed smug for some reason.

Jim crossed the length of the room to catch Conner's eye, then reached a hand out to shake. "Sir, I just want to thank you for your support and guidance - "

"Save it." Conner said, turning to face him. That feeling that Jim had somehow lost an ally came back in full force as the admiral stared him down.

"I'm just saying, I know it would have been difficult to convince the other admirals to keep me enlisted - "

"Son, I didn't vote to keep you on your ship." Conner said abruptly. "I didn't save your career. Cale did."

Jim narrowly avoided looking like the rug had been pulled out from under him. "Excuse me?" He took a second to think it over. "I did what you asked - "

"You don't have friends here, Jim." Conner said softly. There was something… off in his tone. It didn't feel genuine, but he couldn't understand why. Conner glanced over Jim's shoulder, but if he was watching someone, he couldn't see who. "Think very hard before you pull another stunt like this. It might cost your career."

As Admiral Kent abruptly walked past him, Jim turned to watch him, stunned.

Something was _very_ amiss within Starfleet.

* * *

Night had fallen on Khitomer. With it, the hopes for peace were put to rest for the day.

After returning Worf's _bat'leth_ and saying her goodbyes, Diana found herself wandering the main grounds of the Khitomer outpost, quite deflated. To be the bridge to a greater understanding between all men, Amazons had to train and study, to know instinct and subtle notes in someone's voice.

In the Romulan Tal Shiar, Diana had met her match. And in this skirmish, she had gained an inch, not the mile she had hoped for.

"You look down, Diana. Perhaps now you understand why it pains me so to see you in such futile struggles with mere mortals." Ares had appeared in the darkness, leaning casually against one of the rustic Klingon walls. His attire was Federation ambassadorial like Diana's, but it was clearly a ruse.

She inhaled deeply, forcing herself to keep her anger in check before she turned to face him completely. "You could have stopped all of this." She said simply, disgust plain in her voice. "At any moment leading up to the banquet, you would have known the intent. You would have felt the thrum of war in Motar's veins. But, instead, you let this happen."

Ares simply shrugged, tugging at his sleeves as if adjusting cufflinks that hadn't been there for centuries. "Well, my dear, I am a god of _war_. That thrum is what I live for." He glanced up at her, tilting his head as if considering the situation. He was so callous, so calm… it made her ill. "But, I am being honest when I tell you that I had nothing to do with it, nor did I know what Motar was planning. I do not wish to be discovered by the Klingons, else I will lose the power that keeps me here. But, as I mentioned: mutual assured destruction only feeds the god of war until there is no one left. The Romulans, the Klingons, the Ferengi, the Federation… they all have weapons that could obliterate one another easily. Neither of us win if the Tal Shiar keep stirring the pot."

"Then, make them stop." She reiterated, stepping closer. A hand rested at her hip, as if to pull her lasso.

It didn't faze him. "No. I need the Klingons to want war, Diana."

"And I _need_ them to be at peace with the Federation." She insisted.

Ares simply shrugged, sighing dramatically. "Then, I believe we're at an impasse. The fact is, Diana, you cannot kill me because you know someone will resurrect me. Our father, our _sister_ , they may need someone to beg them back to life, but not me. War is primal. War always exists."

Diana shook her head, frustrated and _tired_. "One day, Ares…" She finally breathed, looking back up at him. "One day, you will have no one to worship you. I will not rest until there is finally peace in this galaxy. The Federation has committed to this, and I will help them achieve that goal. It may take millennia, but one day, you will find that you are no more than an immortal, _angry_ old man."

He chuckled, a sound that she would never grow used to. It was akin to hearing evil itself laugh in her face. They had been allies once, but only in the face of greater enemies. It had never been because of their principles. "One day, perhaps, and then I will congratulate you for winning the last great battle. Until then, I propose a truce."

She glanced up at him, an eyebrow raised. "A truce? How could I ever think you would honor it?"

"Because it's in both our interests, and of all the battles I wish to fight, this is not one of them." He seemed… genuine. That was even more disconcerting. "I don't think you realize how powerful you are now. You have _believers_. You've never needed them, and now… they've made you even stronger." There was a dark tinge, a note of envy to his voice, but Ares still seemed calm and cool. Even that mustache he'd never gotten rid of made him seem composed. "I've no desire to deal with your burgeoning cult. So, I will stay with the Klingons, and I will keep their affairs to myself. In return, I will…" His nostrils flared as he spoke something obviously distasteful to him. "Work them towards trusting the Federation. Your part is to stay away from me. If I choose to let the Klingons rip each other apart, you don't get a say. After all, they _want_ to die in battle. I'm giving them an option that is… less galactically destructive."

Diana wanted to turn him down. It would have been easy to dig her heels in, to demand that he surrender.

But, ultimately, he was an unending creature and so was she. This would be an eternal conflict, punctuated by ceasefires whenever she killed him. But, nothing ever changed quickly. She had seen this with the Klingons. In order to achieve any lasting change, she would have to come across the aisle with him as well.

"Very well." She breathed. "But, you do not need worshippers, Ares. If you could one day realize that mortals are not a power source, but the beings you should aspire to love - "

Ares groaned, rolling his eyes. "Let's not make this more awkward, my dear."

"Maybe you cannot change, but this is a start. I will accept your terms." Diana pulled her hand away from the lasso, showing him that she would trust him in this. "But, if you _ever_ come for the Federation, I will end you with great prejudice. That includes your lackeys, your wife - "

Ares's eyes widened and his expression reflected nothing short of disgust. "What, _Circe?_ Diana, I have no idea what she's up to, but rest assured, I'm not supporting it. If you see her, I will _not_ come to her rescue."

She was taken aback. "I thought you two shared a child, that you would protect her for Lyta's sake - "

"We _shared_ a child." Ares growled, the tone more dark and lethal than anything she had ever seen from him before. "But, Lyta was on Earth when the Augments…" The way he trailed off suggested they both knew exactly what had occurred.

Diana's anger and confusion slipped away as genuine sorrow took its place. "Ares, I am so sorry…"

"Don't." He simply answered. His tone shifted to one more cold. "It's better this way. War doesn't need to care about its victims." With that, he pushed off of the wall and stood straight. "Good luck, Diana, in all your future endeavors. With any luck, our paths will not cross again."

And then he was gone.

Diana stared at the spot where he had been for a long moment before she finally walked closer, reaching out to touch the wall, still warm from his body. Even hiding, the god of war was filled with fire and fury. And darkness…

"So… you let him go?"

Diana turned towards the voice. Nyota walked out from one of the smaller alleyways, her expression a mixture of guilt and concern. She had clearly not meant to eavesdrop, but had heard them nonetheless.

Diana smiled softly, then nodded in response. What else could be said?

Nyota took a moment to consider her, then came closer. "Diana, sometimes, you confuse me. You want so much for us, but then you let your brother, the literal god of war, leave here with no consequences for his actions. You could have killed him if you wanted to, or we could have taken him into Starfleet custody."

Diana chuckled, more amused by the suggestion than she probably should have been. "Sister, what makes you think that Starfleet has the technology to restrain Apollo, Ares, or any of the other Olympians? Apollo transported us through the _Enterprise's_ shields and used his powers as a god of light to destroy a warbird." She could tell that her words had unsettled the other woman, and worried her bottom lip as she tried to think of the best way to explain. She spotted a bench and motioned for her to join her there.

Once they had taken a seat, Diana reached up and pulled her diadem off of her head. She turned it so she could see the crest, her thumbs tracing the starburst that had once been Antiope's. It had been so long since she had seen her aunt. Less time since she had seen her mother, but she could remember her mother's words.

She did not know how to explain everything she was feeling to Nyota, but she felt she deserved the explanation. Of all the people on the _Enterprise_ , she had helped Diana resume her role as an Amazon the most. "This once belonged to the greatest warrior my people had ever known." She began, holding the diadem out reverently for Nyota to take in her hands. When she accepted it, Diana allowed her a moment to examine the artifact before continuing. "My aunt Antiope, the greatest general of the Amazons. She died to protect me. She was the first. When my mother gave this to me, she told me to be sure I was worthy of it. In my days since, whenever I wear this, whenever I don the armor that you all recognize as Wonder Woman… it is Antiope I seek to honor. In a way…" Diana shrugged. "I suppose you could see it as belief. Just as soldiers cry to Ares for war, I pray to Antiope to guide my aim, to steady my hand. And I pray to my mother that I may never need to resort to violence at all."

"I'm sure they're proud of you," Nyota finally breathed, sparing a glance up at her.

Diana smiled a little, slightly skeptical. "Perhaps. I'd like to think so, but I also know that they envisioned I would never be what Ares wanted of me."

"And what's that?"

She sighed. "A god." Diana had told them her heritage, but it was one thing to hear it. It was another to explain how gods felt, behaved. "A god like Ares," She clarified. "The Amazons were borne from the sea, a gift from Aphrodite who came from the edges of the sea herself. Sent to temper man's fire, they were demi-goddesses. I came from the union of such a demi-goddess and the king of the gods himself. But, I never knew my heritage. I never knew that worship was the most potent drug an Olympian could sate themselves with." She sighed. "And that is why I cannot kill Ares. Gods can subsist on belief. If even one person remembers their name, recalls their stories… it can be enough."

Nyota slowly handed back the diadem. A moment ago, she had seemed wistful and in awe. Now, she was sharp and critical. She was curious about Diana's statement. "Enough to… bring them back? Is that what Ares was talking about?"

She nodded. "For many decades after I slew Ares in the first World War, I thought he would be gone forever, along with the remaining Olympians. But, in my travels, I befriended an archaeologist: Dr. Barbara Ann Minerva. The two of us were…" She trailed off for a moment, reminded of her part in Barbara Ann's life. "Close." She had kept her at arms' length…. Urzkartaga had taken advantage of that. She took a deep breath, straightening and steeling herself for a tale she had not even shared with Jim. "She found a temple to the god Morpheus outside of the ancient location for Karya, just miles from Mount Olympus. This was in the 1970s, and everyone was embroiled in a Cold War I wanted no part of, so I jumped at the opportunity to see the wonders of this temple."

She could still see the temple, columns miraculously still held up in a site covered by centuries of dirt and rock.

"We did not know that there would be magic in this place. When I arrived, I thought my family dead: including Morpheus. What I did not - could _not_ \- know was that the gods do not die. Not as you or even as Spock." Diana turned to face Uhura as she slipped the diadem back onto her head. "Gods sleep. Even if we are burnt beyond recognition, we restore and renew. And in walking into the temple of the god of dreams, I inadvertently freed my family from the shackles of that sleep. By sensing another timeless being, Morpheus awoke from his long slumber and with it, he allowed Hades passage to the land of the living again. And before myself and Barbara Ann, each of the other gods was restored. But, like spirits in the night, they vanished as soon as the magic had freed them. I had no idea many of them were alive until they sought me out as Wonder Woman. They sensed an opportunity for new worshippers, should I fight in their names."

Uhura cocked her head, disbelieving. "How could that be possible? The laws of thermodynamics state that entropy will always occur in an isolated system. By nature, the body is an isolated system."

"But, we don't operate under the same rules as mortals. And I don't even know how to explain it scientifically, but I do know that what I am saying is true." Diana said with a chuckle. "Do you know the story of Prometheus, the Titan who brought fire to mankind and was punished by Zeus for doing so?"

Uhura furrowed her brow. "I remember that part of the story, but the details are fuzzy…"

Diana shifted in her seat, recalling the story as if she were a child, listening to her mother tell the tale. "Prometheus was chained to a rock in the Caucasus mountains for daring to give mankind a gift that made them less reliant on the gods. Every day, eagles would come and peck out his organs, eating his liver. Every day, he would die in agony and the eagles would leave. But, overnight, he would heal completely and the eagles would start again in the morning."

"But, that's a story," Uhura said, amused but disbelieving.

Diana grinned at her. "Any more than the story that I brought back the Greek Gods? Any more than you meeting Apollo on the bridge of the _Enterprise_? I know this tale to be true. I met Prometheus before I was trapped on Themyscira. He should have languished on that rock forever, but shortly after I arrived to Man's World, he and I met a man named John D. Rockefeller." Nyota's eyes widened at the familiar name, and Diana could tell she was growing less skeptical by the moment. "He was so taken by the notion of Prometheus the Firebringer that without knowing who his companions were, he built a monument to the titan. Prometheus had not felt such power in millenia. There is _incredible_ power in belief."

"So, Ares and Apollo get addicted to it. They need it to survive?" Nyota questioned, reasoning through the information she had.

And there was the crux of the matter. Diana sighed. "Sadly, they don't. If only they could realize that. I never had belief, nor worship the way they did, and I never aged. They see mortals as a resource to cultivate and harvest. I see all humanity, all mortals, as equals. Just because you live shorter lifespans doesn't make you any less worthy of my love."

Diana stopped, sitting up abruptly. The words had flowed from her lips so quickly, she nearly missed how effortless they were. It had struck her. Everything she had tried to stop Ares from doing, and she was at risk of becoming just like him. If she claimed to see mortals as equals… how could she keep them at arm's' length? Had that helped Barbara Ann? Bruce? Would it ever help Jim?

"I am a fool." Diana simply breathed, resigned.

Nyota's eyes widened, probably wondering what Diana was thinking. But, it didn't take more than a glance exchanged between them for the other woman to understand the nonverbal communication at hand. She laughed a bit and shook her head. "You're not a fool. You're just scared of losing someone, I get that."

Diana bristled slightly at the notion. It felt different, less valorous, when it came from someone else. But, it wasn't new information, and it had been necessary to hear.

"You know, before I saw you with Ares, I actually came to talk to you about Jim." Nyota had seemingly taken an opportunity where she saw one.

Considering how easily Diana could get wrapped up in her own thoughts, she was thankful for it. But, it also meant she needed to apologize while she had the chance. "You know that my reservations about Jim do not extend to you or Spock. I am happy for the both of you, and I - "

"It's okay, Diana." Nyota said, reaching out to take the other woman's hand tightly. "I had a lecture planned, but I don't think you need it. I think you just figured it out. I don't want you to lose out on what Jim can offer you because you're scared to lose him. So, I just want you to mull something over while we head back to the _Enterprise_." In moments such as these, Diana found herself missing Lois the most. It had never occurred to her that perhaps…. Spock and Uhura were meant to pick up where Kal and Lois had once left off. She had a feeling Kal would greatly enjoy the _Enterprise_ , once they were able to return to the planet. "I know what you stand to lose if you push Jim away. But, have you thought about what you think you'd gain from that? Because, from where I'm sitting, I don't see what you'd actually gain from cutting yourself off. And if you can't see it, either, then… " She shrugged. "Sometimes you take the good with the bad."

Diana nodded, glancing down at Nyota's hand. Gently, she covered the other woman's hand with her own, unable to voice how grateful she was for their friendship. "Thank you, sister. Your words have not gone unheard."

"I just want you both to be happy, and if you make each other happy, don't throw that away." Nyota squeezed her hand again, then pulled it free. With her other hand, she pulled a datapadd from her bag, holding it out to her. "This came for you while you were with Worf. Looks like he had you on his mind, too."

Diana took the datapadd, brow furrowed for a moment in confusion as Nyota stood to leave. When she looked up to ask her to stay, Nyota simply shook her head and motioned to the datapadd.

"We'll see you when you get back to the shuttle. Take your time." Nyota made her way back down the alleyway and vanished.

Turning her attention back to the datapadd once more, Diana felt a cold weight settle in her stomach. Had he sent her a message that he had been demoted? Or perhaps the Federation now demanded answers from her as well. She would gladly give them, although she imagined they wouldn't like her perspective.

Taking a deep breath, she activated the data padd. A brief text message, all that could be sent to such a long-range outpost like Khitomer, appeared on the screen.

 _I hope your luck is as good as mine. My ship misses you._

 _So does her captain._

 _-Jim_

He was still captain and seemingly unfazed by the entire affair. Laughter bubbled up from Diana's chest as she realized that no matter what happened, Jim had somehow become even more of an eternal optimist than she was.

Typical.


	41. Logs of an Above Average Man: Teaser

**Personal Logs of an Above Average Man: Teaser**

 **Author's Note:** Please note that due to the Thanksgiving holiday here in the States, Age of Wonder will experience a network preemption for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. AKA, I will be taking a break the ENTIRE next week and will resume posting the Wednesday after Thanksgiving week, which will be in the middle of the episode. Love all of you and your support of the fic! Enjoy the first half of the episode this week!

* * *

 _Stardate 2264.102_

 _Personal Logs: Captain James T. Kirk, Federation Starship: NCC-1701-A: U.S.S Enterprise._

 _It's been several years since I last left personal logs for myself. But, in light of recent events and the unique situation I find myself in, I've elected to pick up the habit once more. While these records will eventually be provided to Starfleet Command for further scrutiny, at the moment, this is a safe haven for my thoughts._

 _If someone wants to hear these, they'll have to petition to unseal them. And if something truly is as foul in Starfleet as i think it might be, I don't want to risk tipping them off with my captain's log._

 _It's been two weeks since my hearing back on Earth, and a little less than a week since we left spacedock and resumed our course back to the deeper reaches of the Alpha Quadrant. Yesterday morning, we rendezvoused with the_ U.S.S. Moore _and picked up Ambassador Prince, as well as my first officer and Lieutenant Uhura._

 _Listen to me… I don't know how to make a personal log that_ _ **doesn't**_ _sound like a captain's log. But, I guess that's the point. The chair, the captaincy, it's a part of me. I don't exactly know how to turn it off._

 _Which is why I find myself still replaying every moment leading up to and including that hearing. The fact is, I am… disturbed by Admiral Kent's behavior. Moreover, I'm shocked that he would have still voted to demote me even after we agreed on a mutual strategy. Maybe, he was playing me for a fool. But, that doesn't play right for me. There were a lot of new faces on the board and they didn't see too happy to see me. Top that off with the fact that Admiral Hackett's gone completely dark and I'm getting a real sense that whatever answers I'm looking for, I won't find with direct questions._

 _But, given that I narrowly avoided a demotion, I have to play my cards carefully. As such, I've given Diana an abundance of space and ordered the_ Enterprise _to cool our collective heels for a simple survey of the Foster Nebula._

 _By all rights, it's a routine scientific study that will have absolutely no measure of excitement: the exact kind of thing that Starfleet would be happy to see me pick up after Verex III. Since Diana's negotiation on Khitomer went poorly as well, I think it's time I give the crew an opportunity to breathe._

 _There's a puzzle in front of me right now, but I feel like I'm missing pieces. The worst part is… I know who I want to talk to about all of this, but I don't even know where to start._

 _Thankfully, Diana has never been one to hold back her opinion._

* * *

The nebula was, by all rights, absolutely breathtaking. Jim had the perfect view. With his cup of coffee and a comfortable armchair that faced the viewports, he felt like he was the only person in the galaxy, not just the mess hall. It was early, and while he knew he would be on duty at 0700, sleep had eluded him since they'd arrived to the sector. The emission nebula was a swirling mass of radiant blues and violet hues, but didn't seem to soothe him to relaxation. If anything, he found himself hoping that the crew would find something of interest, even if he had more than enough to think about.

Jim was on his second cup of coffee and his third mental repetition of the hearing, yet he seemed no closer to solving the puzzle.

He grabbed for his datapadd in hand, skimming through the personal log he had been dictating earlier. Given the number of new admirals he'd faced, the fact that of all the people Kent admitted to giving the tiebreaker vote, it was this new Admiral Cale that Jim had _never_ met _…_

Clearly, the political machinations at Starfleet were not in support of Jim or Diana taking any strong opinion regarding diplomatic relations. He just didn't expect Admiral Conner Kent to be one of them. He'd pushed Diana into the ambassadorial role, pushed Jim to accept Jaylah onto his crew, and yet when the chips were down, he had voted for demotion.

Jim wanted to think that it was a calculated move, but he couldn't see why. Unless… Kent didn't want him close enough to see what was going on.

On top of that, what did the Tal Shiar have to do with this? They couldn't have known that Diana would be the ambassador on Khitomer, but it seemed like everywhere they turned, Romulans appeared.

Jim felt his stomach twist uneasily. He wanted to think the best of the Romulan Star Empire, if such a thing were even possible. They were _not_ Nero. Nero had been them in a possible far flung future. But, he couldn't help but think of how much it hurt to know they had taken his father and Spock's world from them.

He didn't know if he could ever see a Romulan as anything more than a killer.

"Are the answers you seek somewhere in that beautiful tapestry?" Diana was behind him. She must have stepped into the mess hall while he'd been deep in thought, The moment her voice touched his senses, that mass of snakes in his stomach uncoiled and vanished altogether.

Jim sat up a bit straighter, immediately turning to look at her with a quick smile. "I'm afraid not. Nebulas aren't known for their scientific value in manners of espionage and diplomacy. She's certainly a sight to behold, though." He motioned to the chair beside him. "Please, have a seat."

It had been the first time he'd seen her since she'd stepped off of the _Moore_ the day before. He'd been on the bridge, and she had been quite vocal about wanting a shower and some rest. Apparently, and to no one's surprise, the Klingon outpost wasn't known for a surplus of hygienic products.

Clearly, just a sonic shower and a change of clothes had left Diana feeling supremely comfortable in her own skin. She wore a white shirt that hugged her figure and a pair of brown slacks. It reminded him of the sort of thing a vintage explorer would wear. She was practically glowing. Of course, Jim had a feeling that might have been a bit of his own rose-colored view of the ambassador and goddess. If the last few months had taught him anything, it was that Diana defied explanation or description. Jim was rational and scientific about all things…

Except for her.

She took a seat beside him, appreciating the nebula as well. For a moment, Jim was content to simply… exist in the same room as her. When they were like this, companions on the same journey, he felt at peace. The monotony of a day on the _Enterprise_ seemed to vanish, replaced by a feeling of warmth and relaxation. He'd never thought of someone who needed an anchor, or a star to steer by. As a captain, he had to be his own compass. But, Diana certainly made it easier to keep himself steady. She challenged him, he challenged her, and he liked to think they were both better for it.

Even if someone in Starfleet seemed hell bent against it.

"I'm sorry to hear that you couldn't get the Klingons to sign the Accords," He finally said, the regret clear in his voice. He spared a glance over at her, finding her attention still firmly on the starscape ahead of them. She was always watching the galaxy beyond as if every vision was… somehow sacred. Maybe they'd lost that, or he had, at the least. "Was it the outpost? Did we blow our chances before you even arrived?"

Diana sighed and shook her head, "No, although the issue of slavery did come up. Rest assured, if and when I am given the opportunity to resume the talks, that will be non-negotiable. The slave trade must end in the Klingon Empire if they ever wish to truly be seen as allies. And I think, with time, we could convince them of it."

With Spock and Uhura still resting, he didn't know more than the small communication she'd sent back to him while he was on Earth that she, too, missed him and that the Accords were off. It was hard not to bring up the fact that she had missed him as well. How much would they orbit each other before she was ready? Would she ever be? Jim could wait for eternity. He knew he already had… once.

"Then, what happened?" He asked. She turned to look at him, clearly surprised he didn't already know. "I'm not cruel. The three of you hadn't really slept since you left Khitomer. I wasn't going to ask my First Officer for a debriefing when you all needed some rest. I reserve the right to exhaust one person: me." Jim grinned as that drew a chuckle from her.

The chuckle didn't last long, back to the events of the mission brought sobriety back to her expression. "A Romulan spy was on Khitomer. Spock called them Tal Shiar."

Jim sat up a bit more in his seat. The Romulan secret police? The same secret police that would have, for example, given one of their warbirds Federation command codes? "Are you sure?"

"He poisoned himself when it became clear that his disguise as a Klingon had failed. I defeated him in combat." Diana sighed, glancing down at her feet as if they still had greaves, not her suede boots."My boot came away bloody with the emerald of a Romulan. When the crowd recognized the subterfuge, the agent realized he would be questioned and poisoned himself with the same chemical he used on one of the Klingon ambassadors. But, knowing that one of their own had been a Romulan agent…" She shrugged. "The delegation was spooked. They could not agree to anything before they could determine the spread of the infection, as it were."

Jim sat back in his chair a bit, frowning. "They always seem to know what we're up to…" He breathed, half to himself.

"When we were on Delphi, Guinan told me that the Romulans were there for me." Diana's voice was much more vulnerable than he had expected. But, the information was definitely new. And it most definitely put more puzzle pieces in position.

He really didn't like how the puzzle was starting to look.

"The Romulans on Delphi had our command codes. That's exactly the kind of intelligence the Tal Shiar collects." Jim offered, knowing that she would be just as dedicated to unravelling this mystery as he was. "I don't like where this is leading. Someone's getting information on Federation activity before we do it." As she exchanged a pensive glance with him, he considered what else he should tell her. Would she have the same conclusion as he did regarding the admiralty board?

He didn't know where or how to explain that someone she probably saw as a nephew or maybe even stepson might not have her best interests at heart. Certainly not Jim's.

"There was someone else on Khitomer as well, Jim." There was an edge of darkness to her voice that made him more than a little concerned that their worst worries were _not_ the Romulans. He didn't speak, he just watched her until she was ready to continue. "Ares has been drumming up a civil war amongst the Klingons." Jim sat up quickly.

"As in _the_ Ares? You're telling me he's alive and you - why didn't you tell me sooner?" The thought that she'd faced him again made his heart drop into his stomach. The havoc he had wrought in so little time…

But, Diana seemed… non-plussed. Or, at the least, she didn't approach Ares with the same kind of manic fervor she once had. "I found him among the delegates. He claims he has nothing to do with this, but… he is alive and well. And yet again, I'm reminded that even when a god kills another god... " She sighed, lowering her head as he saw her disappointment and sorrow for a moment. "Jim, I am even further from the true purpose of an Amazon. How can I create peace when Ares still sows discord among others?"

Jim's stomach twisted uncomfortably. He couldn't tell her about his suspicions. Not now. He remembered seeing this conflicted only a handful of times, and the last time, she'd been worried she would turn into a power-hungry leech like Apollo. Long before then, she had worried that her entire life was a lie because Ares was not the sole arbiter of humanity's misery.

She had balled her hands into fists as she tried to keep her frustration in check. He reached out and gently ran his fingers against the back of her hand until it relaxed. With all the reverence she deserved, he cautiously slipped his hand into hers, squeezing gently. "Diana, I have no doubt in my mind that if anyone could make this galaxy peaceful, it will be you. You've been living up to the charge of the Amazons. If the Klingons aren't ready now, then I know you've made it possible for them to be ready eventually." When she didn't reply, Jim ducked his head a bit to catch her eye. "You remember the No Man's Land? In Veld? I told you that you couldn't save everyone." He squeezed her hand again. "You proved me wrong. There may be casualties, but we don't have to give them willingly. And no matter what you need, I will back you. Always."

Diana took a long moment to examine his face. He had the impression she was gauging his emotions. But, as her hand reached up to run her fingers along his jawline, he realized he might have been wrong. Maybe, she'd been studying his features because she was gauging her own heart. "I missed hearing that." She said, a slight smile quirking on her lips. "Sometimes, I want to think of the decades to come, and sometimes I can't see past the moment."

Jim's smile lost some of its boyish mirth in place of a more serious and honest affection. She had such a big damn heart. "It's a delicate balance, but I prefer to focus on the moment when it's something I can control. You can't worry about the Klingons thirty years from now."

Diana nodded, then slowly pulled back as if something had struck her. "You're right. Nyota and I had a similar discussion. Spock, too." She smiled a bit. "I've had a lot of time to think lately." WIth ease, she stood from the chair, much to Jim's disappointment and surprise. "I need to go see someone, and I believe you have duty soon. Can we speak after your shift?"

Jim blinked stupidly before he simply shrugged. "I… of course."

She smiled and nodded. "Good. I'll contact you then."

Like usual, Jim found himself staring at the door long after she had walked out of it.

Only instead of mooning over her with a boyish crush, he found himself twisted up with concern.

He'd told her she couldn't worry about things out of her control. If he told her about Kent… He honestly didn't know what she'd do. But, one thing was for sure:

He was in for a penny, in for a pound.

Wherever Diana went, Jim was sure to follow. Even if it broke his heart.


	42. Logs of an Above Average Man: Act I

**Personal Logs of an Above Average Man: Act I**

 **Author's Note:** By the way, if you haven't noticed yet, this entire episode will be solely from Jim's POV. I wanted to do a true bottle episode and it's SO MUCH FUN. :D And on that note, Happy Thanksgiving to my fellow folks in the States, and I will see everyone back here for Act II on 11/29!

* * *

If Jim had hoped for a distraction from the frustrating circumstances plaguing him, he wasn't about to find it on the bridge. But, duty called, and he was due on the bridge any minute.

Cup of coffee finished, personal logs filed and encrypted, Jim had run out of ways to pass the time before he would eventually have to take a seat in the chair. On any other day, he would have been more than happy to be at his station.

But, a survey mission he had purposely selected _because_ of its lack of danger or volatility?

He suddenly found himself in the same mindset that had considered the Vice Admiralty position on the _Yorktown._ Bored, staring at the nebula before him with limited interest, and his finger drumming the arm of his chair to the Beastie Boys song running through his head.

Since he had arrived an hour before the rest of his alpha shift came on duty, he had plenty of time to think. As any one of his senior staff knew; Jim liked to play the part of the devil-may-care explorer and adventurer, but he was _good_ at understanding political machinations. He and Spock had shared many a friendly debate over a game of chess, ranging in topics from the Klingon alliance to rehashing the flaw in Spock's Kobayashi Maru simulation. It was part of what had eventually drawn him to the Vice Admiral position.

It wasn't that Jim wanted to be out of the chair. He just knew that he was equally capable of making a difference as an admiral, because he could politic with the best of them. At least, he thought he could. Right now, he was trying to figure out how much of the last year had been political machination and how much of it had been possible treason.

He had two assumptions he could make.

One: Conner Kent was somehow involved with the changing of the guard at Starfleet headquarters and saw Jim as an enemy. Along with Admiral Cale, he had orchestrated transfers, retirements and shifts in personnel expressly to show them Jim's less politically favorable actions.

Two: Conner Kent was an ally. If that was the case, why would he be pushing for Jim to be demoted? Without the _Enterprise_ or the Federation to back him and Diana, they would be no closer to achieving any of the goals the ambassador had unless she was reassigned. And did that alliance extended to Jim? If not, Diana would find herself on a different ship while Conner let Jim take the fall.

In either case, what was causing the shift? What had changed in the last six months to make it unpopular for Jim to go after the Orion Pirate Syndicate? Knowing that Diana felt that hadn't affected the Accords, there must have been something else.

So, that left him, _once again_ , circling back to the Romulan involvement.

Only this time, as the hour ticked on and he was left undisturbed by his gamma shift personnel, he could afford to look at the larger picture.

Every time he'd considered Kent's actions, he'd been thinking about the Verex III incident. But, if the Klingons had still been willing to meet for peace, then that was a scapegoat. He needed to pull back, look at everything regarding the galaxy's politics for the last year.

The entire reason he'd met Diana had been because Romulans had fired on his shuttle in the first place. They were well within Federation space, but they wouldn't have been interested in watching stellar phenomenon. The _Enterprise_ had only reached the Eos system to watch its star in transition. Yet, the Romulan Centurions on Themyscira had been looking for Jim's shuttle, suggesting they were interested in data-gathering of a more military use.

Then, there had been the game of cat and mouse that the ship had played while Jim was on Delphi. The _Enterprise_ hadn't seen a Romulan ship since the Eos system. There had been no time for those Centurions to break through the atmospheric barrier on Themyscira, nor would the shuttle have had the same command codes as its counterpart vessel.

So, it had to be an inside job. Someone had to be leaking intelligence to the Romulan Empire.

There was no way of knowing if they had Romulans masquerading in Starfleet's ranks, or if it was worse. If this was another Admiral Marcus-type situation, manufacturing a war simply to justify their military aims, then there was no telling how many ships might have been compromised by that level of a security breach.

The turbolift doors opened behind him, and Jim pulled himself out of his reverie long enough to turn and see Sulu, Spock, Acosta and Uhura arriving to their stations. For weeks, that had been the standard configuration for his alpha shift, so he thought nothing of it.

It wasn't until he glanced back at his navigator's station that he realized someone was very obviously missing.

Furrowing his brow, he glanced down at his display on the arm of his chair, scrolling through the duty roster. "Mister Spock, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Ensign Jaylah is assigned to the alpha shift?" Kirk asked, no sign of teasing in his voice. He'd given his new ensign a full week on the beta shift while they made their way back out to deep space from earth, but she didn't seem like the type to simply forget that her schedule had changed.

His ever-placid first officer made his way over towards the captain's chair, hands clasped behind his back. "That is correct."

Jim simply motioned to the station still occupied by a crewman that he hadn't had the opportunity to know yet. "Something seem a little off to you?"

Spock followed his gaze, then arched an eyebrow. "Perhaps she, too, needed 'rest' after her 'adventure.'" That was a not-so-subtle jab.

Jim gave Spock a sidelong glance that was one part disbelief and one-part amusement. "Remind me never to take it easy on you, Spock. I never knew you were so touchy about a little R&R."

Spock unclasped his hands so he could instead fold his arms in front of him. "I am hardly 'touchy'. Surveying a class 3 emissions nebula is hardly a mentally challenging task."

Jim sighed, turning a bit more in his chair to face him. "That's why I didn't make the three of you take a full day of rest." Jim glanced back at Uhura, who was watching them both with amusement. "You sure you want to marry him? At this rate, your honeymoon will be between duty shifts." Even if the Khitomer Accords hadn't been signed, he was elated that Spock and Uhura had gone through with their plans to get married by both Vulcan and human standards.

"Don't worry, Spock promised we would follow some human traditions, and that's one of them." She said with a grin. He couldn't help but return it earnestly. He loved to see them both happy. He'd jumped at the privilege to marry them when they'd asked months and months ago. He just hadn't expected them to adopt this sense of urgency over the last couple of weeks.

"Any other fun traditions? Maybe some non-human ones?" Jim said, unable to stop himself from teasing his steadily more uncomfortable Vulcan friend. "I hear on Betazed, the entire wedding party and guests are all naked - "

"As neither of us is Betazoid, Jim, that is a completely unnecessary suggestion." Spock cut him off abruptly, as close to exasperated as he'd heard him in a while.

Jim leaned forward a bit, enjoying the simple opportunity to tease him. "Boy, the Klingons really must have grated on your nerves. What'd they do, insult your parentage?"

Spock seemed unfazed. "Hardly." Jim didn't take that for an answer, so instead, he stared down his friend until he finally offered as additional color: "Klingons are most illogical."

Jim chuckled, momentarily relieved for the sense of normalcy on the bridge. It didn't alleviate the boredom, or help him forget the questions he had on his mind, but at least it reminded him that he was still captain and this was still his crew. The rest… the rest was noise. He'd sort it out.

Once he got his ensign to her station.

"Lieutenant Uhura, please locate Ensign Jaylah for me." Kirk finally said as he flipped a few switches on his arm display so he could use his chair's audio pick-up.

After a moment, Uhura's search came to an end. "Looks like she's in Cargo Bay 1, sir." She sounded just as confused as they all did.

Jim pursed his lips, trying to determine if he should be amused or concerned. He went with the former. "Bridge to Cargo Bay 1: Ensign Jaylah, I know schedules probably aren't your favorite thing, given Academy course loads, but on the _Enterprise_ , I prefer to have you report on time. Care to explain why you're in the Cargo Bay?"

He expected some sort of excuse or apology from Jaylah. Instead, a completely different and unexpected voice answered instead. _"My apologies, Captain Kirk, but I must ask to borrow your ensign for the day._ " Diana's forced sense of formality gave Jim the impression he was apparently somewhere on the outside of a _very_ inside joke. At the least, she was conspiring. There was mischief in that formality. The same way he would convey all of his flirtatious personal intent with simply using her professional title.

Jim figured he'd rely on that tried and true method to see if he could learn what precisely Diana and Jaylah were doing in the cargo bay. He relaxed against the arm of his chair a bit before he continued, clearly curious. "Ambassador Prince. I didn't realize you were working on anything that require a navigational officer. Not that we don't love helping you with whatever diplomatic mission is necessary, I do have several other navigators who would be able to assist - "

" _This is a request uniquely suited to Jaylah's skillset, Captain, so I'm afraid I must insist."_

Without missing a beat, Jim simply smiled and replied. "And I'm afraid I must insist that you let me know what she's working on when she should be at her duty station."

" _As the project has barely begun, I don't think that's necessary."_

"As captain, I disagree - "

" _No one can bother us, Captain. I need time to work and I need the doors to stay closed because I cannot have people coming in and out like bugs."_ Jaylah's voice cut through the comm line, although she must have been in another part of the room.

"Excuse me?" Jim said, trying not to be both amused and annoyed. "Did you just commandeer my cargo bay?"

" _We can provide you an update once we make more substantial progress. I assume that I won't need to insist with my full Ambassadorial authority, Captain Kirk."_ Diana had swept back in without hesitation.

Jim cleared his throat, feeling momentarily outplayed and more than a little reminded of how much her wit and stubbornness made him love her all the more. She was determined to evade the question. He really wished he knew what had happened between coffee this morning and now to commandeer his cargo bay and an ensign. "Of course not, Ambassador, I think we can survive without her for the day. But, I look forward to hearing your _very_ compelling reasons for the short notice."

" _Glad to hear it. Cargo Bay 1 out._ " With that, Diana ended the communication before he could even hear more than a string of alien curses from Jaylah as something crashed quite spectacularly.

Jim cast an almost comically worried look at Spock at the thought of Jaylah destroying something in the cargo bay. Spock's expression in return was nothing short of unhelpful.

Well, he was down a navigator and the most excitement for the day would be a nebula. Great.

Leave it to his chief medical officer to choose that particular moment to give him a distraction.

" _McCoy to the bridge._ "

Jim sat up a bit. "Go ahead, Bones."

" _Come on down here. I want to run another physical, make sure your neural patterns are still optimal."_

Jim closed his eyes and tried not to let it show that he absolutely did not want yet another physical. Bones hadn't stopped running them since Circe had dropped off the memories, and at this rate, Jim wasn't sure they'd ever end. But, he knew he couldn't just whine and tell him no. Instead, he glanced around the bridge, trying to catch Uhura or Sulu's gaze to help him out of this. "Ah, Bones, I think I might be stuck up here for a while. I think we're in the middle of something…"

Unfortunately, he should have known better than to even glance at Uhura. His lieutenant simply smirked and said plainly, loud enough for Bones to hear. "No, Captain, I think we'll be just fine without you."

Jim didn't bother to hide his almost comical look of betrayal her way. He mouthed, "Oh, come on," as she simply smiled back at him.

" _You heard the lady. I heard the lady. Get your butt down here, Jim. McCoy out._ "

Jim didn't even have time to protest before that communication was cut as well. "You have to be kidding me…" He said softly as he stood. As he scanned the room, he realized that none of his crew seemed all that upset he'd be leaving the bridge. In fact, Sulu and even Spock seemed a bit relieved that he would be headed for the turbolift. "You know, I could consider this mutiny."

"I will be sure to note the reprimand in the ship's log, then," Spock remarked, an edge of sarcasm in his tone that reminded Jim that he wasn't always imagining an emotional undertone to that Vulcan composure.

"Besides, we'll all be glad to know there haven't been any lasting effects from the last few months, captain." That was Sulu, offering a bit more diplomatic tone.

Sighing, Jim tugged down his shirt a bit and narrowed his eyes at them as he made his way to the turbolift. "Mister Spock, you have the conn…" He finally remarked before stepping onto the lift with the tone that suggested all of his crew might be plotting against him.

Of course, if they were, it was probably to make him take a few days off. Like that would happen.

* * *

The sensation that his crew was somehow plotting against him in the face of nothing but a nebula to occupy them didn't really seem to dissipate as Jim made his way down to Sickbay. In fact, no sooner than he had stepped off the lift into the corridor, only to see two ensigns giggling when they saw him, he realized that something was clearly afoot.

Bones would have him busy, trying to distract him from figuring it out. Of that, he was sure. Mister Sensitive had done the same to plan that surprise birthday party for him. But, if Jim wanted to know what was going on, he wasn't going to be able to get any gossip from his normal means. With Diana seemingly wrapped up in some scheme with Jaylah, that left only one crewmember that Jim hadn't yet seen that morning to question.

And he had a feeling that person would know exactly what Jaylah was working on.

Jim pivoted and strolled past Sickbay until he reached a different turbolift, then took that down to Engineering.

Anyone knew what Jaylah was up to, it would be her number one fan and his chief engineer.

Engineering was bustling, even in light of what should have been a very relaxed couple of days. After having been furloughed at San Francisco for a week, Jim would have thought Scotty would have the ship in even better condition. But, given the way some of the white duranium plating seemed to be missing from a few of the bulkheads, that didn't seem to be the case.

Jim caught sight of his favorite Scotsman pointing a couple of ensigns in red uniforms towards an exposed power coupling.

"I want that refitted with transparent aluminum by 0800 hours, d'ye hear me? Bloody idjits, I told ye the _EPS_ manifolds, not the bloody power couplings." Scotty was saying as Jim crossed the large bridge over towards main engineering control.

"Mister Scott," Jim began, hands behind his back as he caught the other man's attention. "I thought we were taking it easy this week. Starfleet gave us all those new supplies and manpower, I didn't think there was a single bit of her to be stripped and redone." He didn't really care about the expense or the drain of his eligible security teams who were helping out. It was more that Scotty had, once again, determined that the _Enterprise_ needed to be spoiled rotten. No point in asking what he was doing, Jim knew he wouldn't stop the man.

"Captain!" He said with a grin, grabbing for his cup of tea and saucer off of a console. "What brings you down here? Would ye like a cuppa?"

Jim chuckled, then shook his head. "No, thank you. I've had about as much caffeine as I can get away with before I have to see Bones for an impromptu physical. I'd rather not give him any more ammunition."

Scotty's eyebrows rose as he sipped his drink, then put the cup down with a gentle _clink_. "What's he on about now? Ye look fit as a fiddle to me. Better than ye have in months. I'm sure the Ambassador would be inclined to agree." The gentle tease in Scotty's voice suggested that Diana's part in the Delphi incident had been forgiven in successfully rescuing Jaylah.

He grinned. "Why, thank you, Mister Scott." Scotty didn't catch that Jim was partially indulging him. Instead, he just set his teacup down and nodded as if he'd done a great service. Jim chose not to call it out, and instead continued on. "But, since you mentioned the Ambassador, I was hoping you might be able to fill in a few blanks for me."

Scotty crossed his arms over his chest, leaning against his console. "Dinnae if I'll be any help, but sure. What's on your mind?"

"Well, for some reason that completely escapes me," Jim took a moment to walk past Scotty so he could watch the ensigns installing the transparent aluminum over the power coupling. "Jaylah has been conscripted to help Ambassador Prince with some sort of project that's more important than her duty shift." He glanced back over at Scotty to check his expression. "And apparently that involves using Cargo Bay 1. You wouldn't have any idea what she's working on, would you?"

"Ah." Scotty simply replied. To his credit, if he was hiding anything, he was doing a remarkably good job not showing it. But, he did seem to have _some_ idea what was going on. "Well, I think I might be responsible for that. Partially, anyway. She came to me yesterday mornin' with a notion, wanted to continue the project she'd started at the Academy."

Jim furrowed his brow as he tried to recall what that last project had been. "Something about… stabilizing holograms, right? No more flickering relays like the stuff she had on Altamid, or the constant power drains that Starfleet Engineering keep fighting with?"

"Aye. She's looking to create a stable holo-matrix. Up until now, it's been completely theoretical. Everything that she's done on Altamid involved highly sophisticated refraction, like rudimentary cloaking devices, but she'd been able to create solid photonic elements on the occasion." Scotty nodded. As he did so, his chest puffed up a bit. It was clear that he was remarkably proud of Jaylah's achievements at the academy and wanted to help her continue them. But, Jim knew his chief engineer, and that interest wasn't just professional.

Jim mulled Jaylah's project over. "And I take it you said it was all right? No danger of something going wrong?"

Scotty dismissed the thought with a shake of his head. "No, it'll be fine. The design she has for her matrix emitters draws a fraction of the power the leading theory requires. Jim, if she pulls it off, she'll make holo-technology a reality, oh, easily fifty years before they thought it would be."

Jim found himself considering the ramifications of that, and could understand how Scotty would think the reward outweighed any possible drain to the systems. And if she was using _less_ power, there was far less of a concern. For some reason, a bit of trivia occurred to him. He shifted so he could lean on the back of one of the larger consoles, lacing his fingers together as he thought it through. "Hey, didn't the _U.S.S. Discovery_ have holodecks?"

Scotty canted his head back and forth for a moment as he tried to think of how to answer that. "Eh, yes and no. They had holo-technology, but she was such an experimental ship, there's a lot we won't know about what's truly under her hull until the records are declassified. The _Crossfield-_ class is the definition of our arms race in the 2250s, and I'm not entirely certain I want to know what they've used."

"So, no way of knowing how they managed to pull it off?" Jim wondered aloud. The _Discovery_ had gone missing when he was just entering the Academy. "I mean, I entered the Academy in 2255, they went missing in… '58?"

"Officially. There are rumors that the ship was captured, or brought back to Starfleet and quietly decommissioned." Scotty shrugged, content to talk ship history. It was like talking about the _Franklin_ all over again. Jim had begun to think that for every new ship Starfleet sent out, Kirk and his crew found two more they'd abandoned to stellar phenomena or unusual and strange lifeforms. "Crew retired or reassigned with a false ship name in their record. We don't even know the actual names of the crew. None of it's been officially released."

Jim nodded, mulling the facts over before he finally stood up a bit straighter. "How valuable is holo-technology? From an engineering perspective. Let's say you're a Romulan engineer. Why would you care?"

Scotty turned to face him, then after a long moment slowly sank down into his chair. He grabbed his tea kettle and flipped it back on to heat up the water in seconds before pouring a fresh cup over a new teabag. "Well…" He sighed, leaning back. "Let's see. Ye have holo-technology, ye now now have the ability to create photonic barriers. Imagine how quickly ye can fortify an outpost with a bunch of photonic walls and structures. I mean, the whole idea behind a hologram is that ye just learn how to manipulate a force field into the object ye want and fill it with photons to make it look like somethin'. Ye could hide a secret base if ye had that." Scotty reached over to bob his teabag up and down in the cup idly. "Be a starship searching for lifeforms on a planet and 'Whoops! Nothin' to see here, mates, nothin' but us photonic chickens.'"

Jim had had similar inklings, but hearing it from his chief engineer only confirmed his suspicions. "Let's say you have portable holo-technology you can use planetside. If Jaylah can figure out how to successfully power those types of emitters, does that means you can use it for ships?" He found himself thinking of the old fairground game. "I really don't like the idea of playing a shell game with multiple warbirds."

Scotty's expression darkened. "Oh, aye. Ye'd certainly be lookin' at a whole new level of strategy. I'm no tactician, but once ye figure out how to create stable holograms of size, ye could send out an unmanned probe or shuttle and have it emit the holographic representation of the warbird around it. And they'd all have shields, since by definition - again - _force fields_ are at the core of photonic holograms. Ye'd never know which one was the right one to shoot at until…"

"Until it fired on you…" Jim considered darkly. He had to hope this was all still theoretical, but it sounded all too plausible. "Anything else you can think of?"

"Well, cloaking technology is limited. Ye can't cloak while shields are up because it drains too much power from the cloaking device. Same for weapons systems." Clearly a bit more relaxed, Scotty propped his feet up on his desk. Moments like this, no matter how fraught, reminded Jim that he had the best damn engineer in the galaxy. Mister Scott was unparalleled in his understanding of technology. "In theory, two things make a cloak: One, the visual bending of light so that we simply cannae see them in the viewport; and two, a ship's emissions and sensor readings have to be contained or modulated in such a way that we cannae see them on sensors." He paused before finishing his thought. "If ye had holo-technology that was achievable, ye could switch to a kind of a cloak that used that. Use photonic energy to simulate the space around ye while effectively creating a shield."

"So, that's it. Between that and cloaking technology, that's the arms race." Jim finally remarked. "Whichever one of us gets to it first learns how to outplay and outmaneuver the other within days." He didn't voice it, but he suddenly found himself more concerned about why the Romulans had even been in the Eos system when his shuttle had been shot down. _The Themyscirans had hidden their lifesigns, but not the subspace relay..._

Scotty nodded, frowning a bit. "Absolutely. And no engineer wants to know their work is gonna be weaponized. And if anyone had ever approached Jaylah about such a proposition, I imagine she would've kicked their teeth in."

"But, that could have been why someone took interest in her. Maybe she got too close to something and they wanted her to stop working." Jim suggested.

Scotty's disgust and anger were obvious. "The only ones who'd want to do that would be people interested in stopping us from getting there. No Admiral in their right mind would want to stop her, unless they had someone else's interests at heart, not the Federation's."

 _Like the Romulans_ , Jim thought. Instead of sharing that with Scotty, though, he simply pivoted the conversation a bit. "Did Jaylah ever give you the names of the Admirals and instructors who were interested in her work?"

"Aye, in her communications to me, but ye could just ask her." Scotty shrugged.

"Yeah, but I just told Diana it was fine to have her heads down on this thing. I'd like to know sooner rather than later." Jim tried to play off his concerns. "Just curious as to who took an interest. They might want to know when she figures this out." It was no good getting his crew worked up until he had a theory. Same as he did when Jaylah had been kidnapped, Jim didn't make it a habit of bringing his crew into his own half-baked theories until they were thoroughly cooked and sitting on the counter to cool.

Scotty cleared his throat and considered the request. After a moment, he stood up and went to sip his tea. "Sure. I'll send the names over." His chief engineer didn't seem to be buying Jim's honest curiosity, however. "She's not in danger, is she?"

Jim knew better than to lie, but, he wasn't about to panic him again. So, instead, he chose his words carefully. "As long as she's on the _Enterprise_ , she's in the safest place in the galaxy. Don't worry about her. I'm fine with letting her work through her curiosities. I just wish I knew what Diana had to do with it." He made a mental note to check the Stardate of their mission to Themyscira so he could pull the sensor data and see if anything else struck him. Something else that would have caught their attention without knowing about the planet full of Amazons.

The engineer scoffed, shaking his head. "That woman is a bloody mystery to me, sir. 'Fraid I can't help ye there."

Jim grinned, wide and genuine. "That's all right. Knowing Diana, she'll let me in on the surprise when she's ready. Won't stop me from trying to find out."

Scotty was about to reply, but his attention was drawn elsewhere, somewhere past Jim's shoulder. "Oi! What'd I say? EPS manifolds! Deck three! What're ye bringin' that bloody duranium down here for?" Jim glanced back to see those same ensigns looking a little hapless. They had finished installing the transparent aluminum over the power couplings, but now were holding plates of duranium and headed somewhere towards…. Water purification, it seemed. "Sorry, Jim, I gotta take care of these two." Scotty said, bringing Jim's attention back to him as he set his drink down. "Brand new transfers. They've no idea what day it is most of the time."

"No need to apologize. Take care of our girl." The captain simply replied.

No sooner than Scotty had stepped away, Jim's communicator chirped in his pocket.

Resigned, he cast a glance up at the ceiling, as if he could will the communicator to shut up before he finally pulled it and answered. "Kirk here."

" _Dammit, Jim, I'm gettin' the impression you're avoiding me. How come I have Crewman Oviedo saying he just saw you on his way from Engineering when I know for a fact you were supposed to be headed here?"_

Jim laughed a bit. The doctor must have been bored. "I had to clear a few things with Scotty, but I'm wrapped up." He was pretty resigned to his fate now. Glancing over to watch Scotty rip his ensigns a new one, he rolled his eyes and turned on his heel to head back to the turbolifts. "On my way."


	43. Logs of an Above Average Man: Act II

**Personal Logs of an Above Average Man: Act II**

 ** _Author's Note:_** _I'm BAAACK! And feeling completely refreshed, and I'm 10 chapters ahead in my writing, which means I'm working on the 2-part series finale! Hope you all enjoy this chapter!_

* * *

 _Personal Logs: Supplemental._

 _Maybe my puzzle analogy was a little too simplistic. Perhaps Gordian Knot would have been more appropriate, and more to Diana's liking._

 _In talking with Mister Scott, I am more convinced that Jaylah's kidnapping is somehow related to everything else, but I'm still struggling to fully invest in the theory that my gut just won't let go of._

 _Starfleet may not be a military organization, but it didn't stop people like Admiral Marcus from trying to change that. His fingerprints are still all over the Admiralty Board, but I had hoped it was simply idle speculation and caution towards possible allies. The notion that it could be something more sinister… that's enough to make me lose even more sleep._

 _If I assume that after three separate, seemingly unrelated conflicts with Romulans that they_ _ **are**_ _related, then that suggests the Romulans are looking for new ways to encroach on Federation territory as invisibly as possible. Maybe they were looking for the barrier technology, a way to hide whole outposts. That would explain why, when they couldn't get it from Themyscira, they eventually came after Jaylah._

 _But, Delphi? Khitomer?_

 _My gut tells me that while they came looking for a way to hide… They found something much more valuable. What they see as a weapon that could be controlled or neutralized._

 _I'm not about to hand her over._

* * *

Jim pocketed his datapadd as the doors to Sickbay opened, and he had to face the fact that he wasn't going to escape another physical. His personal logs, no matter how beneficial for his habit of overthinking situations, would have to wait. He had barely had time to grab the sensor data from the Themysciran mission before he stepped off the lift.

He didn't bother to hide how much he didn't particularly want to sit down and be scanned again. Worse, if Bones planned to put him through another game of word association, he'd walk back out the door without so much as a farewell.

When they had first come back from Delphi, Jim had been sure he was doing just fine. To no one's surprise, Bones did not share that perspective. He'd been testing Jim's neural patterns by using word association exercises. If he said chief engineer, Jim said Scott. If he said sniper, Jim said Charlie. If he said trenches, Jim said outdated warfare. If anything, the lack of PTSD evident in his mental state was enough to show Bones that there was definitely only one neural pattern present. To be honest, Jim was about ready to end the scans altogether, to put his foot down if Bones didn't land on the same conclusion soon.

The doctor seemed to be pretty serious about his desire to run scans, much to Jim's dismay. As captain approached chief medical officer, Bones was already pulling over a medical tray.

"Bones," Jim said, announcing his appearance with an expectant look.

"So, you finally decided to drag your ass into my sickbay." Leonard groused, as if Jim had somehow put _him_ out.

Jim just chuckled and shook his head as he took a seat on the biobed.

"Let me guess," Bones said, grabbing his medical tricorder and walking over to Jim. "Even Diana wouldn't rescue you from me?"

He scoffed. "She doesn't even know I'm here. She's working with Jaylah on some project in the cargo bay, and she would've been the first person to tell me to take care of myself."

"Well, I'm hardly surprised. I told you she was way too good for you." Bones ran his sensor over Jim with enough proximity to start making his brow twitch. Getting medical scans with Starfleet technology was entirely predicated on the notion that individuals didn't have personal space boundaries. Jim wasn't quite so liberal, and had probably spent half of his Starfleet career telling Bones to take weird doo-dads off of his face or his arm.

Jim simply crossed his arms over his chest and threw Bones an entirely unimpressed look at the not-even-remotely-veiled insult. "Why do I keep you onboard again?"

He ignored the question, brow furrowing as something on his tricorder gave him heartburn. Jim craned his neck to look at the display, but before he could, Bones pivoted and made his way back towards his office. "Damn critters. I swear these gremlins have made their way into every damn one of my tricorders."

Jim's confusion was plain on his face, much to the amusement of one of the nurses on the way to the biolab. "What… critters?" Another, more serious thought came to mind. " _When_ did we get critters?" When the other man didn't respond, still grumbling in his office, Jim called out: "Bones?"

A moment later, his best friend came back from his office with a datapadd in hand and no tricorder.

Jim opened his mouth, then pointed to himself. "I thought you were gonna do a physical - "

Bones waved him off. "Oh, you're fine. This was just gonna be a final outscan, but I've got no reason to think anything's wrong. Besides, until I can figure out how to reconfigure those tricorders, I'm gonna have a helluva time doin' any more scans."

"What's wrong with the tricorders?" Jim asked again, trying to pull McCoy's attention from the datapadd. "If there's something wrong with your medical equipment, I don't want an accident."

Bones tore his gaze away from whatever was on his datapadd to focus on Jim. Which was just as well. If he had to ask a third time, it would become an order. And Jim only liked pulling rank with Bones _sometimes_.

McCoy tapped the back of the padd with his fingers for a moment, then held it out to him. "I started digging into Diana's blood samples she provided me. First blush of tests were totally normal, run-of-the-mill results. Everything seemed fine at first."

Jim looked down at the datapadd, starting to skim for pertinent details. So far, so good. Her blood type, basic vitals, it all seemed similar to another human. The results were at their core unremarkable, at least according to the first few medical logs Bones had. "So…" His eyes darted back up to Bones when he realized he still had more. "You said 'at first'. I take it that means you found something that makes Diana, well… Diana."

Bones nodded, motioning for him to follow back to his office. Equal parts curious and relieved, Jim obliged, hopping off the biobed and strolling over. Once he was through the archway, the doors shut behind them both.

"I thought since she was a bit more resilient than the rest of us, her cells might be, too." Bones dimmed the lights and pulled up a wall display that Jim had seen him use countless times before. Immediately, Diana's name appeared, along with a full readout of various statistics and medical jargon that went well over Jim's head.

"I exposed her cells to everything I could think of, trying to glean a reaction." Bones leaned against his desk to mirror Jim. "I've never seen anything like it. Cells die. That's just how it is. And sure, races like Klingons or Vulcans might have a slower rate of decay, but _everything_ dies." Bones pushed off of the desk and tapped the display, switching to another view. A series of red NEGATIVE RESULT boxes began to flash over the battery of tests Bones had performed. "Except for her."

Jim knew that had this been even a year ago, he would have as skeptical as Bones was acting. But, with what he'd seen, what he knew about Diana, what the Nexus had shown him… His reaction was hardly one of surprise. "She's a goddess, Bones. I didn't think it was just a euphemism. Not for her."

Bones sighed. "Dammit, Jim, would you just listen to me for a second?" As per usual, he was acting like Jim had put salt in his coffee or something, instead of just sitting there quietly. So, knowing better than to argue with Bones while he winning a one-sided argument, Jim simply motioned for him to continue. "Even incredibly long-lived species have a level of entropy in their cells. Those cells die, decay and shed. But, that's not what happens with Diana's cells. What I first thought was simple resilience with her cell walls was something else entirely.

"Her cells don't ever break down because the moment they start to, they release these little critters on a subatomic level." Bones swiped the display over to show the particles spinning around. "Chronitons. Whole burst of them every time. It's like blowing a damned dandelion."

Jim furrowed his brow, considering the ramifications of that kind of reaction. "Chronitons…" He echoed, then glanced over at Bones. "As in the exhaust from a cloaking device?"

"Not just cloaking devices." Bones said, clearly a bit proud of himself that he had caught something Jim had missed. "Did some digging while we were trekking our way out here. A number of physicians have spotted high amounts of chroniton particles when individuals have been exposed to temporal anomalies. Rumors were the NX-01 _Enterprise_ was flooded with chronitons when she was decommissioned, but at the time, Starfleet didn't have a clue what they were or why they had appeared."

Jim took a long moment to consider why a particle that was a side effect of temporal anomalies would have been present in Diana's cells. If it was a side effect, if she never aged, then…. "Her cells use temporal energy to restore themselves?" He finally reasoned, looking up to Bones for confirmation.

The doctor's expression was less mirthful, more concerned. "On a cellular level. A cell dies, it release a burst of temporal energy that restores just the cells around it. No wonder Diana says she won't die. It's the damndest thing, because it's delayed, too. Some of the cells stayed dead for days, then all of a sudden: poof. Temporal energy ripples through several cells at once."

"So, she's in some sort of cellular temporal flux." Jim replied, thinking it through. "She's not just immortal, she's harnessed the ability to use temporal energy to regenerate on a cellular level." He considered what she'd told him about having eternity. Circe's cruel voice echoed for a brief moment, taunting Jim about how he had worshipped Diana, how alluring that drug could be. "I wonder if Apollo and the other gods do that, too. If it's just ingrained in their DNA. I mean, they're older than Diana and they're still around."

The room went silent for a moment as the two of them stared at the floating chronitons on the screen.

Jim finally mused, "Diana said she saw Ares on Khitomer. I thought she killed him, but she seemed… I dunno, not so much scared _of_ him as she was scared of _becoming_ him. Or not being able to accomplish what she wanted because he still existed. " He reached up to scratch at his jaw, then looked to Bones, honest and concerned. "I don't think she's quite like the other Olympians, but I think you may have landed on why they live so long."

"I dunno, Jim." Bones sighed. "If she's killed gods and they came back… there might not be a deadline on that chroniton burst. For all we know, their bodies might stay in temporal flux even after they seem like they'd be dead by our standards. And then one day, something just… nudges the reaction."

The two of them fell silent. Diana was immortal by every standard. Even death would be a temporary state.

For a moment, Jim found himself suddenly beginning to grasp why she didn't know if she could ever love a mortal again. Three years of wandering in deep space had left Jim feeling untethered. What would two centuries have done?

His stomach swam. Maybe he'd been wrong to push her towards a relationship, to assume it was a gut reaction. There was no doubting how they felt for each other, but would she even remember him in another few centuries?

Would anyone?

Bones seemed to sense Jim's melancholy beginning to creep into the atmosphere and offered another bit of conjecture to get his mind off of it. "You know, when I first agreed to do this for Diana, we didn't have a clue about half the things she could do. Of course, she knew what her abilities were, but, even I didn't think she could hold back ship-to-planet disruptor fire without being vaporized." He shrugged, pushing off of his desk again. "I can't figure it out, Jim. Medically, it makes no sense. People shouldn't naturally be in a state of temporal flux. I'm surprised this hasn't killed her." He grumbled belatedly. "Or us."

Jim rolled his eyes at his chief medical officer, implying that he was worrying over nothing. It was more to comfort Bones rather than because Jim disagreed. There was a level of danger there. Warp cores were fickle. "If her body is doing this all the time, how come she's not flooded my ship with chroniton particles? I'd like to think Scotty would notice something like that."

"I'm not sure, but I think that might be part of the process." Bones turned off his display, the lights in the office coming back to normal visibility. "I need to get her back in here to run some controlled tests. My guess is that there's another part of the process that uses the chroniton particles before they ever leave her body. That might be what causes the enhanced strength or bursts of speed. She moves faster because the chronitons might power her system differently." He picked up his medical tricorder and waved it front of Jim for a second. "Too bad I don't have the same nifty synthesis on all my medical equipment." Sighing, Bones started to look at his tricorder again, tinkering with it. "Might have to ask Scotty up here to help me reconfigure them and purge them from the bay. There's no harm to us, it's just a nuisance. We just don't want it near the warp core."

Jim cast a sardonic look his way. "Do me a favor and don't wait on that. Scotty's got his team performing a little TLC, but nothing he can't step away from." Given the subject of his thoughts all morning, he couldn't help but ask: "Is there any way that someone could use your research to do this to someone else? Another human?"

The doctor shook his head. "No. I haven't gotten that far, but even if I had, this is in her genetics and I haven't the first idea what's doing it. My guess is that if someone wants Diana's powers, they'd have to do it the ole fashioned way." Bones deadpanned. "Zeus wasn't known for his fidelity."

Jim chuckled, trying not to think too much about the implications. He'd never really thought about what Diana's children could be like, and he was afraid if he started down that road, he wouldn't stop. Not only would it have been way too premature, but Jim hadn't exactly had the best role models for the subject. "Well, I'll take what we can get. It's enough to know that there's no risk of someone wanting to use her genetics to their advantage." He sobered as he considered how truly unique Diana was, and how valuable someone could see her and her abilities. Jim exhaled. "Anyone else seen this?"

Bones shook his head. "Haven't even had a chance to go over it with her. I was planning to show her today, but as you mentioned, she's apparently tied up. I was going to send this to Starfleet Medical once I discussed it with her."

Jim's gut twisted as his intuition threw up red alert klaxons. To his credit, he kept his expression neutral as he pushed off of the desk and stood straight. "Do me a favor: hold off on sending your report until further notice. I'm not so sure Starfleet needs that information right now." He might have seemed relaxed, but his voice had an edge of concern to it.

Bones caught the change in Jim's tone. "You're thinkin' someone's watching."

"I think a few 'someones' are watching, Bones, and I don't like it." He said darkly, almost conspiratorial. "I feel like we're in the middle of something and until I know what it is, I'm not letting anything leave this ship. Just... keep your head down and make sure you encrypt anything regarding Diana." That Gordian knot analogy seemed to be more and more apt. "I need to keep digging."

The doctor nodded, and Jim turned to leave. Apparently, Bones wasn't done with him yet. "She knows you have her back. And so do I." After a moment of internal debate, the normally acerbic man slipped from ship's physician to captain's confidante. "Have you two had a chance to talk things out? Or are you still… you know, doing the dance."

Suddenly, the office seemed entirely too small for a conversation with that much baggage. Nevertheless, Jim leaned against the wall and tried to use it to bolster his conflicted heart. "We talked a little bit this morning, but not about us. Meeting Ares really shook her, and…. I remember being there when he appeared, but not really knowing who he was or how he was there." His memories as Steve were hazy on a good day, on a good memory. Almost nothing of the airfield remained, except for the pivotal moments that he'd refused to let go. "You know, it doesn't matter that I wasn't Steve for all that time. Even if I didn't remember it personally, the thought that Diana had to face him _again_ on Khitomer makes my blood boil. I just want to go out there and find him and - "

"Jim, take it easy," Bones quickly said, setting his things down and walking over to him. It seemed like a bit of an extreme reaction, but that was when Jim realized his his nails were biting into his palm. "What the hell was that about?"

Sighing, annoyed with himself, Jim shook his head and exhaled. "I'm fine. It's just… Ares and Khan would have had a lot in common, so…" He trailed off.

He should have known Bones knew exactly what he was thinking. "So, they both make you wanna cloud up and rain all over them. I get it." There was a level of honest comfort in his voice that helped the last of Jim's tension bleed away.

"I know she can take care of herself, but I want to help her. And I was too busy trying to keep control of my ship, so I feel like I didn't do enough." He shrugged. "I feel like trying to show her that I remember her fighting Ares should help. But, I can't tell." Jim slowly took a seat in Bones's chair. The other man didn't seem to care or notice. Not for the first time since they'd left San Francisco, Jim felt an itch begging to be scratched, one he only indulged off-duty. But, at least a glass of scotch would have helped loosen his tongue. As it was, he found it difficult to tell even Bones what he'd been thinking. "Maybe I'm never going to be who she needs." He said softly. "Maybe knowing that I was Steve is a barrier she can never cross. She'll see me and just remember that she lost me. And no matter how the gods, her messed-up family, Olympians - whatever you want to call them - decided that Jim Kirk was who Steve got to be next, that might never be fine with her."

"Well, if either of you want my advice," Bones said with a shrug. "The only way to figure that out is to try. If the two of you keep circling like this, you will never figure out if it _could_ have worked." When Jim didn't respond, the self-proclaimed counselor to the captain continued. "Besides, it's not like you're replacing anyone. You'd be replacing… yourself. And I think she probably knows that, Jim, she just needs to get used to it." Jim felt Bones rest his hand on his shoulder, squeezing gently. "And if you're really worried about Ares or Starfleet or the Romulans, then you can bet she's worried about them, too. And I can guarantee you'd be stronger together than apart."

"I know that, Bones." Jim said softly, trying to keep the frustration out of his voice. "But, what if she doesn't? Or she decides she needs to go it alone."

"Then nothing you say will change her mind." The way he spoke, Jim was suddenly and poignantly reminded of how Bones had once been Leonard the husband. Sometimes, love just didn't last. Or it didn't work. "But, at least you'll know that you told her how you feel. That's all you can give her."

Jim considered the advice, knowing it came from his genuine concern, but unfortunately, there was no antidote to Captain Kirk's serious allergy to patience and waiting. He could handle it in the chair, but in his private life, this was probably the slowest he'd _ever_ taken with any potential relationship. Wanting to do things right, to not pressure her. But, he couldn't help but remember Steve's words in the Nexus, and by extension, Jim's own words. _I wished for more time, and they gave it to us._

How much of that time needed to be wasted because he was giving her space?

Bones couldn't give him an answer for that, so Jim didn't bother to ask. Instead, he drew himself up and out of the desk chair, standing straight.

"Thanks, Bones. That was surprisingly helpful." He finally said, forcing a grin and stepping past him out of the office.

It wasn't until Jim had made it halfway out the door that he heard Bones finally shout back, voice full of gravel:

" - The hell do you mean _surprisingly_ helpful?!"

* * *

Jim got about halfway to Cargo Bay 1 before he realized that it probably wasn't going to get him anywhere. He had a feeling if Jaylah or Diana had been willing to let him in, he would have heard an update by now. Instead of risking a lecture or more verbal skirmishes that would end in a loss, he chose to head to stellar cartography.

There was no reason to rush out of this survey, so he had an abundance of time to think. He would take advantage of that time and use the stellar cartography lab's high definition displays to review all of the sensor data from Themyscira. At the time, he'd been on the surface of the planet trying to get back, and they had barely managed to save the planet. He'd never actually given the planet itself the proper attention his science officer normally did.

The stellar cartography lab was in a unique state of being _almost_ needed by his crew. At the moment, his science teams were busy collecting all of the sensor data that the nebula had to offer. But, until the computer could finish analyzing and extrapolating a fully realized model of the nebula for the cartography displays, there was no reason to use the lab. By that same token, it meant that the computer had had months to finish cycling through all of the sensor data from the Eos system.

He took a moment to dismiss any of the lingering crewmembers in the lab and then sealed the doors behind him. Just in case, he didn't want anyone else knowing what he was looking into. The closer to his chest he could keep all this, the better it would be.

"Computer, display the Eos system, primarily the third planet." He finally said as he finished pulling up the sensor data on another console.

After a moment, the lab lights dimmed to darkness. In front of him, the entire back wall of the stellar cartography lab revealed its true intent and flickered to life in the form of a star chart. It isolated the particular system, then re-configured to show him the planet in all its glory.

PLANET: EOS-3  
CLASS: M  
FEDERATION DESIGNATION: CANDIDATE FOR TRADE, POTENTIAL MEMBER  
NAME: THEMYSCIRA

The computer's words repeated in staccato, harsh tones as the images flickered onto the screen. He'd nearly forgotten how beautiful it had looked. In the great sea of black, this planet was a bright, lush paradise. The verdant northern continent with its edges of golden, sandy beaches… the swathes of sapphire blue water that covered much of the planet.

For a second, Jim thought of the palace and its crystalline, Kryptonian structures. All that time, the last Kryptonian had been hidden away on a planet with no ties to anyone. Not the Federation, not the Justice League…

Just as Themyscira had once been an island out of time, it had become a planet out of time.

While Jim had been among her guests for just a short time, he had seen enough to know that there was plenty the Romulans could gain by taking the planet. Crystal technology was completely lost to the Federation, but the computing power had been tremendous. In the same time that Earth had bombed itself a few times over and probably stalled the evolution of warp technology, Themyscira had built a subspace network. They had said the atmospheric barrier had been courtesy of the crystal technology, too.

Since Jim was a betting man, he decided to throw more chips down and have the system call his bet.

"Computer, search for any mention of Kryptonian technology in both pre-Federation and Federation archives. Look for specific references to atmosphere or isolated systems technology."

The Romulans had clearly been past the Neutral Zone when they showed up in Eos. The _Enterprise_ and that warbird shared the same items of interest, so Jim needed to look there first. The atmospheric interference would have been the only item of interest.

The computer pulled up a number of possible records as it searched through countless Federation databases.

One particular entry caught his eye, and Jim pulled it up for further review. After a moment of skimming the details, he brought that up into the larger display to place the text beside the planet.

Jim furrowed his brow as he muttered aloud, "The bottled city of Kandor…" He read through the text detailing a Kryptonian city that had been placed into stasis, some sort of spacial anomaly, shortly before the planet's destruction. In order to prevent discovery by more sophisticated races, an atmospheric barrier had been created that masked all lifesigns.

Just like the barrier on Themyscira.

Kandor had later been found by the Justice League, where it was restored. Jim furrowed his brow as he tried to determine where the city had been, but realized it was an incomplete record. "Computer, where did you locate this record? It's incomplete."

FILE RETRIEVED FROM DIRECTORY: A.R.G.U.S.  
PRE-FEDERATION.  
PRE-MACO.  
PROJECT NAME: … Classified.

Jim scowled as he realized he'd been stonewalled. "Command override: Kirk-Alpha-1-1-Delta-3." There were no records available on a starship's database that the captain didn't have access to. His security override should have easily done the trick.

But, it didn't.

INSUFFICIENT CLEARANCE.

"Excuse me?" Jim asked, trying to sound only half as incredulous as he felt. He repeated his code, then received the same message again.

Why wouldn't he be able to access this log?

"Computer, have there been any recent changes to security access for members of the _Enterprise_ crew?" Jim asked, crossing his arms over his chest so he resisted the urge to hit something.

AFFIRMATIVE.

"When and what was changed?"

ACCESS TO THE FOLLOWING DIRECTORIES AND PROJECT NAMES HAVE BEEN REVOKED FOR ALL _ENTERPRISE_ PERSONNEL.

Almost everything that had belonged to the agency A.R.G.U.S. had been classified to some degree. Some project files were completely unavailable and others, such as Kandor, were partially so.

That would have been bad enough. The timestamps read Stardate 2264.84.

During the hearing. _Before_ his verdict but while the _Enterprise_ was clearly in spacedock.

Jim didn't know what to think. His first reaction was anger, pooling in his belly like a hot coal. But, his second was that if they were going to classify anything, why bother to leave any part of the records available?

"Computer, who made the changes?"

CHANGES TO ACCESS MADE BY….

ADMI…

AD…

The computer stopped, unable to do more than flicker for a moment before the entire lab went pitch black.

Jim held his breath, wondering what the _hell_ had just happened to his ship as he reached for his communicator. Just before he could flip it open, the lights came back up to a standard post-crisis yellow alert.

Everything Jim had pulled up was gone.

"Computer, retrieve previous records."

DATA LOG CORRUPT.

POWER FAILURE CORRUPTED MULTIPLE LOGS. UNABLE TO COMPLY.

"Power failure…" He said, gritting his teeth. "Why did we lose power?"

SIGNIFICANT POWER SURGE IN CARGO BAY 1.

Jim took a deep breath and closed his eyes, trying to keep his frustration in check. Flipping open his communicator, he sighed and hailed Engineering.

"Kirk to Scott. I thought you said Jaylah's project wasn't going to affect any systems." He said, not bothering to hide his exasperation.

" _Aye, sir. I'm not entirely sure what just happened. I'll go check on her - "_

Jim shook his head, then reminded himself that Scotty couldn't see that. "No, it's fine, I'll check in with them. Just… Send someone from Engineering to Stellar Cartography. I need a data log reconstructed."

" _Aye, sir."_

Jim clapped his communicator shut and stared at the computer console for a long moment. Jaylah's tinkering had just taken his best lead. It would probably take days to restore.

At least… he really hoped it was Jaylah's tinkering.


	44. Logs of an Above Average Man: Act III

**Personal Logs of an Above Average Man: Act III**

Whether or not someone liked Jim Kirk's patented wit typically depended upon which side of it they were on. In this case, he had to hope that Jaylah would appreciate it. Otherwise, he would find himself having to issue reprimands on what should have been a completely routine mission.

Scotty had all but promised that she wasn't going to draw that kind of power from the ship, but either he had wildly miscalculated, or she was doing something she shouldn't have been. There was still that lingering suspicion that the cartography lab had lost data because of something else, something a bit more nefarious, but Jim didn't want to think about that until the engineers could piece back the data logs.

The walk to the cargo bay had managed to bleed most of his frustration with his new ensign away. Provide she could promise to stop draining power from all of his auxiliary systems, he'd try to use it as an opportunity to learn about her project. More importantly, he wanted to know why Diana was involved.

Jim paused at the great doors to Cargo Bay 1. Unsurprisingly, they didn't budge. Considering Jaylah had all but said she sealed the doors, he had a feeling he'd have to get creative. He knew there was an entrance via jeffries tube, but he figured he'd play nice first.

Reaching over to the console, he opened a channel into the cargo bay. "Ensign, please tell me why you're trying to break my ship?"

He knew they could hear him, as the comm line immediately filled with some sort of thrumming noise. He figured it was a result of her project, but he couldn't be certain. The fact that Jaylah took entirely too long to answer him suggested that she knew she was in hot water with her new captain.

" _I didn't mean to break your house, James T. I will be more careful with it!_ " Jaylah sounded completely distracted and _completely_ put out by her captain calling her out.

"Fantastic…" Jim muttered under his breath at his ensign's audacity. She was acting as if _he_ was the one who shouldn't be there. Last time he checked, he still had the command bars on his sleeves. He took a moment to lean against the bulkhead and steel himself for what would probably be an ultimately fruitless, if not amusing, conversation. He raised his voice so the comm line would pick it up. "Look, I understand that you're doing some sort of experiment regarding holographic technology. And I'm more than happy to let you do that, since the Ambassador's already asked that you continue, but you need to unseal these doors so I can see what you're doing. You caused a power surge across half the ship."

" _No, James T._ " Jaylah was obstinate and even worse, calm and proud of how obstinate she was. Jim rolled his eyes as she continued. " _I will be more careful, but it is a surprise. I will not break your house."_

"Jaylah, this is not up for debate, unseal the doors - "

" _Jim…_ " Diana's voice, yet again, seemed to accomplish the task of completely distracting him from his rising temper. He was starting to think she knew that just saying his name like that made him forget why he was annoyed. It was the same tone of voice that negotiated treaties and convinced him to liberate entire colonies. _"I understand your concern, but I can assure you Jaylah isolated the issue very quickly and it won't happen again."_

He sighed, shaking his head in exasperation. "Really? Funny, I don't remember you getting a degree in advanced holo or standard engineering."

" _You are supposed to have faith in your crew, Jim."_ She replied. He got the distinct impression she was teasing him. _"It doesn't matter how much time passes, your complex personality continues to give you more trouble than it should. Just trust her. I do."_

A disbelieving, slightly affronted chuckle escaped his lips. "That's… not really an answer, and it doesn't make me feel any better." He knew that he had the command codes to override the doors, but right now, it was more the principle of the thing. And he wasn't sure what annoyed him more: the fact that he desperately hated someone holding a surprise over his head, or the fact that Daina, the one woman in the galaxy he could not say no to without _great_ difficulty was helping Jaylah do so. "Look, if I have to order you to open the doors, I will - "

" _I have disconnected all my power couplings and I will call Montgomery Scotty when I start again."_ Jaylah offered, clearly trying to offer some sort of olive branch. _"But, I do not want to ruin the surprise. Montgomery Scotty and I will make sure I do not steal power again. Please, James T. You ask me to trust you. Do the same for me. I promised Diana I could do it. I just need time."_

Jim exhaled slowly as he caught the subtle change in her tone. He became quite aware that Jaylah was offering another one of those very precious moments of vulnerability. Whatever she was working on… it was personal and important to Diana. While piquing his curiosity, it also struck him that Jaylah was very determined to extend her skills to the ambassador. Jim knew from experience, in both lives, that Diana brought that out in people. To know that she was doing that with Jaylah, who had spent weeks in captivity and years isolated on Atlamid…

His concern for what they were working on melted away in the face of the potential support and friendship being built on the other side of the doors.

Taking one more deep breath to steel his nerves and remind himself to uncoil some of that tension in his shoulders, he finally replied. "Ok, fine. But, I need you to be more aware of the systems. Reach out to Scotty before you do anything else like that. Understood?"

There was a long pause before Jaylah replied with unbridled excitement. _"Understood, James T!"_

As he heard the thrumming grow a little louder over the comm line, then fade away, he got the impression from the context clues that Jaylah had gone back to work. But… the line was still open. He smirked as he realized who was probably on the other line. "I'm guessing whatever this surprise is has something to do with our conversation this morning?"

Diana chuckled, clearly impressed that he'd hit home. _"Yes. I think Jaylah can help me settle a few things, ease some of our mutual burdens."_

He leaned against the bulkhead, arms crossed as if he was listening to a confession through cracks in the doors, not a crystal clear comm line. "Diana, you ease my burdens just by being on this ship. I wouldn't ask you to do any more."

" _I appreciate that. But, this is something_ _ **I**_ _need to do. For both of us."_ She fell silent on the comm line for a moment, then finally offered: _"I'll check in with you in an hour or so. Perhaps you should take the opportunity for these quiet moments to go relax, Jim. Cargo Bay 1…. Out."_

The line fell silent and Jim found himself smiling at the sealed doors nearby. Even though he knew she couldn't hear him, he couldn't help but mutter: "Yes, your majesty," before pushing off of the wall and trying to figure out where a captain with no adventure and nothing but time would go next.

* * *

As it turned out, that meant heading to the Mess Hall. While most captains on starships like the _Enterprise_ dined in their quarters, Jim made it a point to know his crew. To that end, his dining room in his captain's quarters was only very rarely used for dinners with the senior staff and he tried to take most of his meals in the mess hall. It made it easier for his crew to approach him. And while he'd spent much of his time working strange hours in compared to his first shift, he had always managed to find some quiet time here or there. Since Diana had come aboard, he had found that most of that quiet time had been slowly co-opted by the ambassador. Not that he was complaining. He knew how much talking to her eased his mind.

She was busy borrowing his new navigator for a side project she wouldn't tell him about, so he would have to make due without Diana's smile and soft council. He'd have to mull over his mystery of the corrupted and encrypted data logs with a cup of coffee and maybe something a bit more substantial than bland rations from the food synthesizer. The food synthesizer did a fairly good job at mimicking other food, but it never tasted quite like the real thing. It reminded him when his mom had gone on an almond milk diet for about two weeks. Being that they had a dairy farm just down the road, the first time she'd tasted cream top milk again, she'd realized the substitute just wouldn't cut it. As captain, he had the privilege of being able to ask for "real" food whenever he needed. There were vegetables, meats, cheeses and other products in the mess hall stores, but not enough to really sustain the crew for the rigors of deep space.

But, it wasn't in his nature to flaunt the privilege. His crew worked hard, and if he could feed them all steak and baked potatoes every day, he would.

Jim nodded to a couple of passing yeomen on their way to their duty shift before he made his way over to the lieutenant in charge of his mess hall. The galley chef, a broad-shouldered woman with long blonde hair that she kept perfectly pleated into a beehive of braids, turned to face him and grinned in response.

"Captain," Lieutenant Herta Raffert said, grabbing for a towel to wipe off her hands as she gave him her full attention. The woman hailed from Berlin and still held quite the accent, but it was nowhere near as thick as say, Chekov or Scotty. In fact, she reminded him of Diana with a voice that stubbornly clung to the familiar while adapting to the unknown. She was a new addition to the _Enterprise-A_. He hoped she'd stay. "You're early. I was sure I wouldn't see you for another few hours." As the galley chef, Herta made sure all the foodstuffs for the crew were maintained. She made sure food synthesizers stayed operational, prepared meals for the captain and most importantly, catered any ambassadorial meals when there were delicate negotiations on the ship.

"Actually, I just wanted to let you know I'm going to have rations tonight." He said, careful to keep his voice low and honestly disappointed. She knew how to make _everything_ and he'd have to pass up on it. "I think it's important that I spend some time with my staff. Doesn't seem fair to ask for the strip steak." He gave her a lopsided grin. "I'm sure you understand."

Herta simply shook her head and smiled, not much for small talk. "Of course, captain. Just let me know if you change your mind. I'll bring something up to your quarters whenever you need."

"Thanks." He replied, both in gratitude and farewell, before he turned back to face the mess hall.

There were about twenty crewmen and women in various states of their dinner or breakfasts, depending on their shift. They hadn't noticed him yet, or if they did, they were polite enough to keep to their conversations. Jim had no interest in being the local celebrity on the ship. Not anymore. He had willingly given that title up to Diana the moment she stepped on board and dazzled every member of the crew.

One particular crewman did seem out of place amongst them, but only because he knew for a fact that she was supposed to be on the bridge. Jim grinned, eager to take the opportunity to tease a friend.

"Lieutenant Uhura," He said with an easy smile as he slid into the seat across from her. "Last time I checked, I left you on the bridge."

Uhura glanced up at him over her mug of Vulcan tea, twirling her fork in her other hand as she regarded him. Once she finished her sip, she slowly set her mug down with a smile that bordered on mischevious. Instantly, Jim knew he'd missed something. And she'd be sure to tell him.

"Yes, you did, Captain." She said, almost too casually. "About four hours ago." To punctuate her point, Uhura spun her fork in her hand one more time before stabbing a piece of something unappetizing and bland. She took a bite with more gusto than Jim ever thought he could manage for something actually managed to look less enjoyable than those old processed food cubes from his teen years.

The only reason he didn't take the opportunity to tease her food choice was because he was thrown by her statement. He glanced over at her datapadd, catching the chronometer in the top right corner. He winced, sighing a bit in disappointment and self-reproach. "Wow, really? I thought it was still morning."

She quirked an eyebrow at him in a manner that reminded him - eerily - of both Spock _and_ Diana. That was a level of derision he really didn't need, and it somehow felt like getting it triple-fold. It was as if the other two were somehow on either side of Uhura, also judging him for losing track of time. "I guess that physical took longer than it seemed. Bones must have found Andorian measles or something."

Jim's next smile was a little more strained, determined not to give her the satisfaction of knowing she'd riled him up. "Very funny." He leaned forward, lacing his fingers together and resting his hands on the table. "Actually, I was doing a bit of research about your adventure on Khitomer. Specifically, our constant run-ins with the Romulans."

Uhura paused, her fork midway between the plate and her mouth. "Oh?" She finished her bite only when it became clear he'd let her in on his theory.

"Well, seems weird that ever since we went to Themyscira, the Romulans keep turning up like bad pennies every time something involves Diana." He spotted an unopened bottle of water beside her, then reached forward and took it for himself. To her credit, Uhura just rolled her eyes and silently forfeited ownership. "I mean, they knew to fire on the Temple of Delphi, and that had absolutely no military or tactical value from their perspective. They had no way of knowing what we were doing. I went through the records from our time in orbit around Themyscira and found some similarities between their atmospheric barrier and some Kryptonian place called Kandor. But…" He shrugged as he recalled the ill-timed power surge and encryption. "I've hit a - hopefully - temporary dead end. I think the Romulans were after something, though, and in running into Diana, I'm worried they might think she's more valuable."

"But, Motar didn't know who Diana was when we came to Khitomer," Uhura replied, brow furrowed in confusion. "And he was Tal Shiar. If the Romulan Star Empire was interested in our Wonder Woman, wouldn't the Secret Police be in the know?" Before Jim could reply, she held her hand up to stop him. She had apparently answered her own question. "Oh, no, wait… Spock suggested and Commander Kor confirmed that Motar had been embedded within the Klingon Empire for months, maybe even years. If anything, losing their agent on Khitomer might be seen as an unfortunate side effect. Until Worf and the others make it back to Qo'nos with the information, any Tal Shiar agent that deeply embedded won't know that Diana was the one who bested him."

Jim considered that. "So, then, whoever might have been sending warbirds our way might not have learned about her influence in Federation diplomacy until now. Or, they assumed she wouldn't be a threat." At Uhura's expectant look, he realized that he would either have to clue her into his further suspicions, or leave it alone. He was still missing a big piece in the puzzle, and he didn't think it was one she could answer.

Instead, he changed the subject.

"How was the first half of the trip? Did Diana enjoy New Vulcan?" He took a sip of water, then immediately regretted it. Flavorless. Bland. The exact opposite of a good cup of coffee, or a fifth of scotch.

Uhura, blissfully, provided him the distraction he'd asked for. The smile on her face lost its mischief and instead took on a more tender, wistful note. Clearly, it had been a good trip for her and Spock as well. "Diana found it quite illuminating and interesting, yes. We had to leave her to her own devices for most of the trip for the ritual preparations, which… went about as well as expected."

Jim's eyebrows rose as he noted her sudden nervousness. He leaned a little more forward. "Oh? Trouble in paradise? I thought you guys just had to sign some papers dissolving his betrothal or something."

Uhura cleared her throat. "Not exactly. T'Pring was pleased that the betrothal was to be dissolved, but it was more of a spiritual divorce than a legal one. It does mean that when Spock is ready, then… let's just say there are no more obstacles." He had the distinct impression from the way she suddenly took a double-sized bite and quickly clamped her mouth shut that the subject was a bit more delicate than he thought.

"Woah, what obstacles are we talking about here?" For a moment, Jim let himself get caught up in the simple joys of teasing one of his closest friends. She had known him longer than any of the crew. If he was going to tease _anyone_ about love lives, it had to be the woman he'd drunkenly failed to flirt with and had been a source of constant annoyance for. "C'mon, what, do Vulcans get freaky like Orions or something? Because, having been on the front end of that pheromone stuff, I gotta say - "

Uhura held her hands up. "We are so not talking about this!"

He grinned, deciding to push his luck. "Or maybe they're more like Klingons. I hear the women bite - "

" _Jim._ " She simply scolded, pursing her lips and giving him an icy stare that suggested if he didn't drop the subject, she'd drop that fork into his hand.

He laughed and held his hands up in surrender (and also to save any fleshy bits in range of that fork). "Okay, okay, point taken. I'm just curious. I find it very fascinating."

"The only thing I need you to find fascinating about our marriage are the vows you said you'd write." Uhura chided him, officially closing the subject and steering towards another. At the mention of their vows, Jim immediately came to attention, the smile fading from his lips. "Have you given anymore thought to them?"

He opened his mouth, trying to think quickly. It had been a real honor to be asked by both of them to officiate their legally binding Federation ceremony, but that had been months ago, before Diana had arrived on the ship. It seemed - and was - practically a lifetime ago. "Do you want the real answer or the one that will make you feel better?" He finally asked, trying to play off his sense of guilt.

She frowned at him.

Jim sighed, head drooping. "I know, I'm sorry…" He finally looked back up at her, knowing that he had every opportunity to work on them, but every reason to find some way to stay in Diana's orbit. Even when he was trying not to. "I have been thinking about them and I will absolutely have vows that will even have Spock shedding a tear, but if I'm being honest…" He shrugged. "I kind of figured I was your stand-in until someone like Sarek could step in and do it. I didn't think you'd want me to officiating your ceremony. I honestly thought Spock would demand someone more… Vulcan."

Jim was being honest with her. He'd written a few drafts of the vows in his head, but never bothered to put words to padd once he knew they planned to return to New Vulcan. He was sure that he was not Spock's first choice.

Uhura sighed and set her fork down. This time, she pushed her tray off to the side and reached out, motioning for Jim's hand. Slightly caught off-guard, he leaned forward again so that she could take his hand in both of hers. "Okay, I need you to understand something." His eyes widened a bit, curious and slightly concerned she was about to give him a lecture. "You were the only person Spock wanted to officiate any Federation ceremony. We have a ritual we'll perform on New Vulcan when the time is right, but we wanted to make the commitment to each other in front of our friends, because this crew is our family."

Jim didn't interrupt, even though he was sure some ill-informed crew member would see the close moment and assume something foolish. Instead, he found his eyes watching the way her thumb caressed the back of his palm. It reminded him of the kind of thing his mother used to do when she was trying to comfort him or impart some word of wisdom he'd ignore for the first decades of his life.

"Jim, I know I haven't really said as much before, but…" She squeezed his hand gently. "I see you as a brother. I would go to the galaxy's edge for you. I know Spock feels the same. So, please don't think you're a replacement. In fact, he even suggested you. You were the most logical choice."

Unbidden, a lump had settled somewhere in the back of his throat. He'd spent so much of his life trying to run away from his family, then trying to make up for it, by building a legacy his father had been proud of. Somewhere along the way, he'd gained an extended family that he'd die for. He'd do anything to protect the people he loved. He'd thought it was based out of selflessness, a general love of his crew. But, it had taken meeting Diana for him to realize that his heart was so much more… nuanced than he'd once thought. Her heart was so big, she loved so freely… Steve Trevor had felt a general love for his team and an urge to protect innocent victims from the war. Diana had helped him realize, just being there, that he felt so much more. He could have closer relationships than Steve ever could. And to his surprise, he did.

Not that he could voice any of this. He was lucky enough that his throat would clear when he swallowed, and he thickly just muttered, "Thank you. That means a great deal."

Uhura grinned and slowly released his hands, leaning back a bit so he could take a moment to clear his head. "You're welcome. Now, stop second-guessing it. That's not like you. Normally, you're all over this kind of thing. You love being the Great Officiator. You've officiated like, six weddings and two Andorian unions." She teased, then sobered a bit as she prodded him a little more. "What's going on? And I don't mean about the Romulans. I mean about Diana. I want you to be happy, Jim. You deserve that."

He opened his mouth, then closed it again as he tried to figure out just what to tell her. "I don't even know where to begin…" He finally offered, shrugging a bit as he did so.

"Well, consider it for a moment and then tell me what's on your mind while I get you a cup of coffee." Uhura stood and took her mug. As Jim mulled over what had been gnawing at him, she eventually returned with another cup of tea for herself and a tall mug of coffee for him.

"Thank you…" He said as she took a seat.

Uhura nodded, but kept her focus on him. "So, what's wrong?"

As Jim tried to boil down all of his concerns into a succinct question, he realized that just by being present, she had given him a place to start. "How did you and Spock do this part?" He asked, not really sure how else to phrase it.

"This… part?"

"Vulcans live longer than humans." He clarified. "And I know you and Spock went through a rough patch before we landed on Altamid, but somehow, you two worked it out. You even want to get married. So…" Jim tried to keep his thoughts to the present, not the distant past and its promises of simple breakfasts and newspapers. "How did you make that decision? How did _he?_ "

Uhura reached up to run her finger along her bottom lip, considering his words carefully. He'd seen her do it before in countless briefings. It was how he knew he had her full attention, and that she was determining her next words with the same care she gave translations of delicate alien languages. "It wasn't easy. And the first time, he made the decision for me." She finally said.

Jim thought back to the last year and the limited information Bones had given him about Spock and Uhura's break-up. Surprisingly, the doctor who seemed to love gossiping about the resident Vulcan had been surprisingly tight-lipped. "He ended things, thought it wasn't fair to you?" He offered up as an educated guess.

She nodded, lips quirking as she took another sip of tea before continuing. "He thought that it was his duty to go to New Vulcan, continue the welfare of his species. But, as he eventually came to realize, he had plenty of time to do that. Because, the truth of the matter is that I am here now. I won't always be. So, in a logical way, he would always have more time than me. If he wants to find another mate after I've passed, he'll still be young enough by Vulcan standards to do so. He can still help populate the planet with part-Vulcan children. But even more so…" Uhura sighed some and leaned back, glancing out the viewport to the starscape and the nebula they were surveying. "I pointed out to him that he wasn't even fully Vulcan. And having children with me doesn't mean that they can't also be raised like Vulcans." She smiled, as if sharing a private joke. "He found that a compelling argument and mentioned that it would not be the first time he had been reminded that what makes one Vulcan is not blood, but rather the _katra_ and the unfailing principle of logic."

Jim narrowed his eyes, curious. "Sounds like he speaks from experience."

"He does, but… it's not my story to tell." She added after a moment. "I'm sure he'll tell you about Michael one day. When he's ready to."

He hated knowing that there was another mystery and now a name he didn't recognize, but he could tell she wasn't about to budge on the subject. Just as well, he wanted to focus on the question at hand.

"So, the two of you have just decided that you're fine with it? With your life ending before his and the fact that he'll… have to lose you." Jim finally asked, trying to be as delicate as possible with an indelicate quandary.

Uhura motioned for him to take a sip of his coffee, as if to remind him to shut up and let her keep talking. "The fact is, everything dies, Jim. And everyone dies. When we talked about it, I knew that going in. I couldn't stand the thought that it was somehow better to live the entirety of my life knowing that we could have made something that would outlast us, be greater than us both, but that we didn't because we were both too afraid of the pain of loss." She took a moment, tapping her finger on the table before she finished. "The fact is, when we looked at things logically, Spock could only see what he would lose by holding back: not what he would gain by it. And that was enough."

There was something in the way she said that gave him profound relief. All this time, he'd been worried that he was pushing her, that maybe she would never understand and that it wasn't going to work. He wanted to do what his former self had asked. He wanted to give them more time. But, he didn't know that she would ever take it. Because, at least Spock knew at the end of the day that he would see Uhura again. Everyone died. Except Diana.

"Uhura, I've never felt this intensely about anyone in my life." He finally confessed. "Not even Carol, and I _really_ loved her. But, Diana is…" He exhaled, at a loss for words. "Different. I don't think I'll ever love someone the way I love her. And that's frightening because it happened so fast. Makes me think I never knew what love really was at all."

"Spock said that Steve asked the Olympians to make you for her, right? To be the man he didn't have time to be?" She offered, trying to help him sort through it. "Maybe everyone else was in preparation. So you two could get it right."

"I'd like to think so. And I'd love for her to recognize that, but…" He groaned and swirled his coffee around in his mug as if it held the answers. He realized, belatedly, that he was thinking of tea leaves. "She… doesn't seem to want to let me in. And I'm pretty sure she's finding reasons to avoid me."

Uhura quirked an eyebrow as she reached for her cup of tea. "Why would you think that? Because of this project with Jaylah?"

"No." He quickly said, then wavered. "Maybe." At her skeptical look in response, he held a finger up to clarify. "I'm not entirely sure it's _not_ related."

Uhura shook her head as she set her drink back down. "You are being ridiculous. I'm sure she's not avoiding you, Jim. If anything, it's the opposite."

Immediately, Jim's intuition told him that he'd chosen the right person to talk to about his issues with Diana. Because his communications officer, his best friend, clearly _knew_ something. He sat up. "Hang on, do you know something? Has she been talking to you? About us? I mean, the idea of there being an 'us'?"

Uhura clearly realized she had said just a bit too much. It was enough to get the gossip bloodhound James T. Kirk on the scent, and the only way to lose him would be to remove herself from the conversation. Standing abruptly, she grabbed her tray and mug, starting for the mess drop-off counter. "I didn't say that, and even if she was, I'm not going to betray her confidence."

Jim wasn't so easily dissuaded. He rose and followed after her out of the mess hall, ignoring the gnawing in his stomach as he realized he hadn't eaten in hours. It took him no time to catch up to her in the corridor, even as she kept walking. "Which suggests she _did_ talk to you, because otherwise you would have left it at that and kept eating."

Uhura glanced over at her, but kept her pace brisk and unfaltering. "I can't tell you anything, Jim, it's not for me to tell."

"That's crap and we both know it!" He protested, following her as she reached the turbolift. "Is she coming around? Look, I just want to know if I'm going after a lost cause here. I don't even think that would stop me at this point, but if she's uncomfortable, I will give her all the space she needs."

Uhura turned to face him just as her hand brushed the panel to summon the turbolift. "Jim, I promise you… it's not a lost cause. Just… be patient." She said, smiling and trying to ease his troubles.

"But…" He scowled as the lift doors opened behind her and she stepped backwards into them. He leaned in the doorway, forcing the ship's computer to wait for him to decide if he would go with her or not. "You know I'm the captain, right? I could order you to tell me."

"But, you won't." She simply replied, reaching out to push him back out of the way gently. "Because if you do, I'll tell Diana and that would ruin the surprise."

"Surprise? Wait, what - " Once he stepped away, the doors began to close.

"Bye, Jim!"

"What surprise?" He called, at a loss.

But, it was no use. Uhura was gone and now Jim was more confused than he had been before.

Thankfully, at least his mind was completely off of the Romulans. He was completely focused on Diana.

He had a feeling that wouldn't get him into the Cargo Bay any faster, though.


	45. Logs of an Above Average Man: Act IV

**Personal Logs of an Above Average Man: Act IV**

ACCESS DENIED.

"Ow! Dammit!"

ACCESS DENIED.

Jim hissed as the console zapped his fingers for a second time, and he finally conceded that somehow, some way, Jaylah had turned the _Enterprise_ against him. Or at the least, she had turned Cargo Bay 1 against him, and he couldn't seem to unseal the doors no matter what he did.

He knew that he probably could have called security, but his interest was distinctly personal, driven by the same instinct that would unwrap birthday presents and re-wrap them three days before the party just so he knew what he got. His pride - and the fact that he didn't have any actual security concerns regarding Jaylah's project - would not let him call for his chief of security.

Unfortunately, after the last fifteen minutes of trying to covertly rewire the console, he was beginning to realize he would have to concede the battle. Or, at the least, change tactics.

A yeoman walked down the corridor, spotting the captain as he tried to casually lounge against the bulkhead in such a way to disguise the mess he'd made of the console behind him.

"Yeoman…" He simply remarked, nodding at him while his fingers nervously tapped at the bulkhead over his head. To be fair, for a guy with a poker face, Jim was never very good at covering when he'd been caught.

He wasn't all that surprised that his yeoman regarded him with a nervous little smile before he passed on the other side of the corridor. Once he was past Jim, the yeoman's pace quickened until he disappeared quickly around the hall.

Jim straightened, clearing his throat once he was left alone in the corridor once more, then turned his attention back to the console. He'd give it one more try to rewire the doors and open them, and if that didn't work, he'd have to give up for the moment and find something else to do to occupy his time. He knew that returning to the bridge would only get him run off by his crew again the moment he asked too many questions.

Glancing down at the console, he took another look at the wires that he thought went to the security door panel override. Even though most of the technology was completely touchscreen-based, the security overrides also had the good ole-fashioned electric and hydraulic override. If the ship lost significant power, there were still ways to open all airlocks and jeffries tubes.

Jim wasn't about to try the jeffries tubes until he'd exhausted all other options.

He was fairly certain that the override he was trying to cross and activate responded to the door controls, but maybe he'd grabbed the wrong wire to trip the hydraulics. He untwisted the wires he'd previously connected, then went for a different combination.

About as careful as he had been before, he quickly twisted them together before a spark or two spat at him and the console flickered dramatically.

Jim took a step back, grinning proudly as he fully expected the large cargo bay doors to open for him as if welcoming a great king.

Instead, there was a high-pitched whine that made him wince and his teeth ache for a long moment. "Dammit, dammit, dammit!" He hissed as he rushed back over to the console. He must have tripped the comm line instead. He quickly reached for the wires, tempted to pull them completely clear of the console.

Thankfully, the whine disappeared the moment his fingers brushed the wires and seemingly jostled him into the perfect position.

The thrumming noise from his earlier conversation with Diana and Jaylah filtered over the now open comm line. He had somehow overridden the comm lines, so instead of requesting an open channel, he'd just created one.

" _Please, sister, you must rest and drink something._ " Diana's voice sounded further away. Since internal ship comms were designed to amplify only after acceptance of an open line, it was possible he'd tricked the computer into thinking that it was just picking up ambient noise. It gave Jim the distinct, very sudden knowledge that he was eavesdropping.

If Jaylah took the water, he couldn't tell. When she replied, it was as if she'd never heard the request. _"Why do you call me that? Sister? I do not have many human friends, but you are not the only one. James T… he also calls me sister."_ He had to bite back the involuntary chuckle when she said with obvious distaste: _"But he says I am_ _ **little**_ _._ "

Diana chuckled. _"It is an honorific and endearment to my people. I come from a civilization on Earth, but we are a people comprised only of women. Well, we were when I was born on Themyscira. So, to show fealty and loyalty in battle, we call our peers sister. In Jim's case, it is similar. I knew he held affection for you, but he has made it clear to you that it is fraternal, that he sees you as family."_ Jim smiled a bit as he noted the soft, tender tone to her voice. She always seemed to know exactly what to say and how to say it, even when she thought she wasn't making any sense. _"Does it bother you?"_

There was a long moment of silence. Just as Jim reminded himself that he really didn't need to be listening in on their conversation, there was the sound of a small whining device over the comm line. He had to guess it was a hyperspanner or isolitic converter. Either way, the sound didn't last for long before Jaylah finished whatever task she had and finally replied.

" _No."_ The word seemed almost foreign on her lips, as if she didn't know it felt in her mouth. _"But, I do not expect it. I do not know what it is like to have family anymore."_

" _Neither do I, in many ways. I've spent almost as much time away from my people in recent years that I all but forgot how to find a family in the unknown. But, you find ways. People."_

" _That is why you do this for James T?"_ Jim found himself perking up like a puppy. This surprise really _was_ about him?

Of course, Diana didn't feel like sharing with the class. Even if she didn't know he was listening, she instinctively knew to change the subject.

" _I understand that you were alone on Altamid when the crew found you. And I imagine that you endured great hardships in the custody of the Orion Syndicate."_ Jim should have known that given the opportunity, Diana would want to help her open up. Seeing as how he knew Bones and Scotty couldn't seem to get her to say anything, he hoped she'd open up to someone who could show equal parts vulnerability and strength.

" _... Yes. That I was alone. Yes. I saw… terrible things on the outpost. Things that…"_ Jaylah's voice quivered. _"Things worse than what Krall did. Slaves being eaten. There were others that were beaten and had their spirit taken."_

" _Their spirit?"_

Jaylah sighed, perceiving a slight. " _I do not know when my words are wrong until someone says so. But, I do not know what is the right word for_ _ **itza**_ _."_

" _It's all right. You don't have to explain anything to me. I just want you to feel that you can come to any of us, myself included. This is not a burden you should bear alone."_

Jaylah hesitated for a long moment. When she spoke again, her voice was steady. " _I want to belong, but… I never know if I do."_

" _You're part of the crew, Jaylah. I know we haven't spent much time together since you arrived, but, believe me when I say that I understand your confusion."_ Jim furrowed his brow as he strained to hear Diana as her voice faded to an even softer tone. _"In truth, I have spent much of my life keep people at a distance. Emotionally. And much like you, when I found myself thrown into the culture of Earth, I felt alone and wishing that I had someone to keep me grounded. I had people asking me to be their family, but it was all so different…"_

" _That you think you can't fit."_ Jaylah finished for her. Again, it was quite clear that Diana was helping draw her concerns out of her quite effortlessly. _"I remember my family. We were not… Federation people. We smuggled, we traded. And then we got stuck. And Krall killed my family. So, I was alone. And now, I never feel alone but I_ _ **always**_ _feel alone, but the alone is different!"_ Her voice pitched a bit higher in frustration. _"And they do not have the words for that kind of alone! There are words I cannot make because they have these - these -"_

" _Euphemisms."_ Diana finished for her, as if to help diffuse the burgeoning explosion that was Jaylah. _"The standard Earth language uses references to common actions or native species to create extra meaning. But, it can be difficult to grasp when you do not share those experiences."_

Jaylah seemed beyond relieved. _"Yes! You know why their words are so strange!_ "

" _Absolutely._ " She grinned. _"Etiquette is worse. When I first came to their world, I was told my armor was not clothing because they had silly rules about covering the body."_ Jim chuckled softly as he recalled the department store and how mortified he and Etta had been. " _And how was I supposed to know that when they asked me to try an outfit on, they didn't mean where I stood - "_

" _Shh."_ Jaylah's order cut through Diana's anecdote easily.

" _What is it?"_ She asked.

Jim heard the spanner drop to the ground with a clank, followed by footsteps. He held his breath without thinking, straining to determine if Jaylah was doing something in particular, or hearing something in particular.

It grew so quiet, that he could hear a pin drop….

" _Domoya utza! You are_ _ **listening**_ _!_ " Jaylah's voice cut through the silence so effectively he thought his eardrum burst. _"_ _ **Stop trying to spy on the surprise, James T!**_ **"**

Unable to stop himself, Jim tried to defend his actions and completely blew his cover. "It wasn't intentional, I swear, I didn't know this was the comm line - "

" _No, James T! You are a rug!"_

"How am I - you mean I _lie_ like a rug?" Jim protested, unable to stop himself from getting a rise out of her.

" _It is almost ready! But, now you wait until Diana wants you to see!"_

He heard a couple of beeps as Jaylah clearly found a console in the cargo bay, then another squeal sound through the corridor before the line cut altogether.

Wincing, Jim reached up to poke at his ear a bit in the hopes of clearing the brand new ringing. He was fairly certain that if he didn't already have tinnitus, he was dangerously close to it now.

"Ah, to be fair, I deserved that…" He breathed in exasperation.

Something told him that if he tried anything else with that door console aside from putting it back together the way he found it, he wouldn't just have Jaylah breathing down his neck, he'd have Scotty throwing things at him. Resigned, he quickly reassembled the console back into the standard configuration and placed the screen back into its depression in the wall.

No sooner than he completed the work, his communicator chirped. He realized he probably needed to count himself lucky that he could still hear the particular decibel level of communicators, or he'd have Bones to answer to.

Jim pulled his communicator and flipped it open. "Kirk here."

" _Cap'n. I'm in Stellar Cartography. We've finished restoring as much of the data logs in the lab as possible."_ He could tell from Scotty's voice that he wasn't happy with the outcome.

"I didn't mean you had to do it personally, Scotty." Jim said with a slight frown. He wasn't sure if that was an indication that things were worse.

" _Aye, I know, but seein' as how Jaylah's power surge was partially my fault, I figured I should."_

Jim smiled a bit at the admission, then recalled what he'd said in the first place. "Hey, what do you mean 'as much of'? How much of the logs were irretrievable?"

Scotty paused for a long moment before he replied. _"We lost almost everythin' belonging to the Pre-Federation databanks. When we get back to Yorktown, I'll be able to run another download."_

He frowned, the last of his mischievous mood gone, even if he hadn't slipped into melancholy or worry yet. It just didn't bode well. "All right, I'm on my way."

* * *

"What are we looking at?" Jim didn't bother with pleasantries as he entered the Stellar Cartography lab. Thoughts of Jaylah and Diana's mischief disappeared in the face of genuine, dangerous subterfuge. The sooner they could rule that out, the better.

Scotty stood straight, having been crouched over the console while he worked alongside Keenser. He turned to face the captain, expression a bit dour. "Gremlins, sir. I think we've got a few wee ghosts in the machine."

Jim arched an eyebrow, crossing his arms over his chest as he took a deep breath, reining in his temper. "If you could elaborate, Mister Scott."

The chief engineer nodded and tapped a button. The record that came up was that same old Pre-Federation entry on Kandor. "I believe this was the last file ye were reviewin'."

He nodded, surprised to see how much of it was still intact. "I thought you said you lost almost everything."

"Aye." Scotty propped a hand on his hip as they reviewed the record. "But, this, along with a handful of other records remained. Looks like when Jaylah sapped the power from auxiliary systems, she actually stopped the worms from finishin' what they started."

Jim scanned the data record. It still was largely redacted from some security restriction. But, they hadn't lost anything in the record. "Hang on, what worms?"

"Looks like the moment this record was accessed, a very nasty worm started to churn through our systems. If Jaylah hadn't dropped the power when she did, it's entirely possible this also would have been deleted." Scotty motioned to the display on the console at their waists. Jim could now see several red boxes that read [LOG MISSING] in bold type. "Lucky for us, Wee man -" He nodded to Keenser. " Stopped it and isolated the code. The best I can tell, it's all related to an government agency of the old United States: something called A.R.G.U.S."

"I've heard of that…" Jim muttered, although he struggled to remember why. It took him a long moment before he recalled his conversations with Diana. "They were an agency Diana worked with. I remember they filmed her fight with Medusa and Circe."

"Stands to reason they've got plenty of other intel on Diana's old gallery of rogues and ne'er-do-wells." Scotty said, a bit of a grumble to his voice. Jim didn't have to tell him what he'd been researching for him to put it together. "Ye were researching what else the Romulans might want outside of our holotechnology. Like the atmospheric barrier on Themyscira." He turned to look Jim in the eye. "You think it's related."

For a long moment, he debated not cluing in his chief engineer. But, if anyone was going to help him figure out how to retrieve the lost data, it would have to be Scotty. "Yes. I think the Romulans went to Themyscira because they saw the same thing we did: an atmospheric barrier that obscured lifesigns…."

"But not subspace relays." Scotty recalled. "They thought it was a Starfleet base."

"And I think someone's been feeding them potential new technology." Jim pointed to Kandor in the display. "First this, then on Delphi. _Someone_ gave them our command codes. I sent my reports about the Nexus to Starfleet Headquarters before we actually set course. While we're doing that, someone figures out what Jaylah's been doing and kidnaps her?" He shook his head. "Someone's watching our every move, Scotty. I just can't figure out how. Half the admirals in my hearing were all new faces. I didn't even see Hackett there, the Admiral who has Vanessa in his custody." For a second, his stomach twisted into knots. "It's possible he's been cut out of the loop. Might explain why he can't contact Diana if suddenly he realizes he's not getting the full picture."

"What're we gonna do about it?" Scotty asked, clearly concerned.

That was a tougher question, and Jim knew it. "Keep any conversation about everything we just talked about out of your ship logs. I want you to talk to Spock and Bones. The three of you need to compile anything sensitive to Diana and any technology or medical data you think might have a military application that we've come across since the _Enterprise-A_ left spacedock. I want to hear it all as soon as it's ready, off the record, and we'll assess where to go from there."

He hated giving those kinds of orders. He could continue to go through the records himself, but he knew his crew and their strengths. He needed to put the field experts on it. They'd see way more than Jim could.

Scotty seemed to understand that, too. "Aye, sir. We'll let you know as soon as we find something, Jim, but it might take a few days."

Jim shook his head, but his eyes remained fixed on a new line of text that had appeared on the Kandorian record.

ENCRYPTED BY ADMIRAL C... **[DATA CORRUPTED]**

"You have 72 hours, Mister Scott. Please make use of it." He finally said, taking a deep breath. He couldn't jump on the suspicion, but he had a feeling that only meant one thing:

Admiral Conner Kent.

* * *

Jim determined that if Jaylah stonewalled him again, this time, he really would get a security team. Sure, he didn't have _any_ evidence outside the circumstantial, but Conner was practically Diana's nephew. He didn't even know what he would say, because everything he had was still just a theory. But, he needed to level with her somehow, and this personal project would just have to wait.

The afternoon had somehow flown by, as it was wont to do on a starship where the only internal clock he kept was set to no sunrise. He had begun to regret not eating while he'd had the opportunity, but he knew if he just ignored the hunger pangs, they'd go away eventually. He'd be ravenous in the morning, but there would be plenty to worry about then.

When he reached Cargo Bay 1, prepared to have to use his authority if necessary, he was more than surprised to see Diana and Jaylah waiting outside of it.

As his feet slowed to a halt in front of them, his gaze remained stalwartly focused on Diana for a long moment before he finally turned his attention back to his ensign, in her gold uniform and with a defiant smirk on her face.

"Ambassador, Ensign." Jim said by way of greeting, hands behind his back as he tried to gauge the change in situation. "The two of you done for the day? I was afraid I'd have to get Security this time."

"Yes," Jaylah replied with an expression that suggested that she was happy she knew something he didn't. "For tonight. I will continue tomorrow, but… after my shift."

"You're assuming I won't have you on doubles now." Jim said, smiling a bit. If he hadn't just come from the stellar cartography lab, knowing that there was every reason someone would hurt Jaylah to get to what was on the other side of those doors, made it tough for him to truly want to tease her.

"I'm sure that won't be necessary, Jim." When Diana spoke, his stomach twisted a bit more. He was sitting there with a bunch of clues and no clear way to put them all together, but the picture grew more and more disturbing. Yet, all he wanted to do was sit beside her and stare at the nebula, to feel all that worry drop off his shoulders for just a few moments.

But, he couldn't.

Inhaling deeply, he drew himself up a bit more, regarding Jaylah with a bit of forced scrutiny before he finally relented. "As long as I finally get to see what you've been working on all day, I'll consider it a worthwhile endeavor."

"It _is_ , James T." Jaylah insisted with a grin. "Diana likes it. You will, too."

Quirking an eyebrow, he realized he didn't want to rain on anyone's parade, least of all Jaylah's. Putting aside his momentary concerns, he motioned towards the door. "Well, then, ladies, care to give me the tour?"

"I can only take credit for making the images. They are not mine to share." Jaylah pulled something free from her uniform and handed it to Diana. It was some sort of remote, but he could tell it wasn't standard Federation issue.

"Are you sure you don't want to show off your work, Jaylah? This was yours - " Diana gently protesting, a politely confused expression plain on her face.

The other woman simply shook her head and motioned to the door. When neither of them moved, Jaylah reached over to grab Jim's arm with one hand, and then did the same to Diana with the other.

"You go now. So you will stop being Alone." As the doors opened and Jim found himself staring into a location _distinctly_ not like Cargo Bay 1, Jaylah gently pushed them forward and released them.

When the doors shut behind them, Jim was… speechless.

He knew, empirically, that Cargo Bay 1 was about three stories high and had storage containers packing that top level. It could store hundreds of cubic meters of cargo containers…

But, last time he checked, it could not store The Louvre and the entirety of Paris, France, back on earth.

Yet, that was what stood before him. The museum towered over them several meters away, the windows and columns lit in an artistic fashion to highlight the architectural marvel. To their left stood one of the smaller glass pyramids and to their right was the greater pyramid that he associated with the landmark.

He turned, momentarily forgetting himself, intent on questioning Jaylah on how she did it, and how his ship wasn't suddenly bleeding the exponential power needed for holo-technology. Instead of the cargo bay doors, however, he saw _more_ of Paris.

Genuinely stunned and amused, he simply laughed a bit and turned back to the smaller pyramid. He took a few steps closer, then hesitantly reached out to touch the glass. It didn't feel quite like glass, but it felt solid. Like touching a force field.

"Jaylah thinks that with enough time, she may be able to build in a fully immersive and interactive environment. We started with Paris because there are already several fully rendered 3D maps in the Federation database." Diana's voice even sounded different. It was a strange, subtle change, but once they had entered the holographic simulation, Jaylah had changed the acoustics in the room to mimic the more open air courtyard. "But, for what I requested, I am still quite entranced."

"She changed the acoustics, it feels solid, and…" Jim turned to face Diana, still in wonder. "There's a breeze…" He glanced up, watching the stars twinkle above them in an artificial night sky. "This is… amazing." He said with an awed grin. "She's a genius, Diana. She's going to change the galaxy…" He muttered as he reminded himself that at the end of the day, this was the accomplishment of one of his own crew. If they had never found her on Altamid, would she ever have been able to fulfill her potential?

"Yes, she is." Diana replied, stepping closer to him. "And you and I will have the privilege to help her do so."

Jim tore his eyes away from the technological marvel around him, instead giving his sole focus on the simultaneously godly and yet human marvel before him. She was absolutely stunning. It didn't really surprise him that that Jaylah had learned a cinematic grasp of lighting, given her phenomenal skill with full refractive technology.

Even so, Diana took his breath away. That white shirt had been undone a button or two, her sleeves were rolled to the elbow, and she had taken her hair down long ago, but every ringlet and gentle wave seemed to fall exactly where it should.

The smile on her face was of genuine amusement, a grin that he'd only seen rarely. He, on the other hand, was more than a little dazed.

He hated to take that from her.

But, thinking about what Jaylah had accomplished in one day, how desperately others wanted it…

"Diana…" He began, not really sure what he would say or how he would say it. "I need to tell you something... "

She crossed the distance between them in moments, a clear destination in mind. She reached out, taking his hand gently and pulling him closer to her. "It can wait."

"I'm not sure it can - "

"Will it destroy the warp core? Right now?" She asked, quirking an eyebrow. "Because, I'm sure your crew will let you know. And Nyota would have told me if something had come up."

Jim held a finger up as he opened his mouth, then closed it again. After a moment of thought, he asked, "She's in on this?"

"She is 'in' on the fact that I was working on a surprise for you and I asked that you not be disturbed once you were off-duty." With a free hand, she reached up to trace the command pin on his shirt. "We've spent so much time… _I've_ spent so much time only asking time of you when you've chosen to put yourself off-duty. And I have used every opportunity to make that…" She tapped the pin again. "The reason why we cannot have the conversation I know we need to."

The night sky around them may have belonged to Paris, but he found himself thinking of Veld, of snowfall, of how warm she was, barely touching him but not quite close enough to satisfy his senses.

In just drawing closer to him, but not pressing against him, she was tantalizing his senses and _utterly_ wrecking any sense of duty and focus he had.

He told himself that it was because they'd been doing this dance for months now and that he _knew_ how she felt, so the waiting had truly become torture.

"Diana…" He wasn't sure if her name was a warning that his grip on the more serious matter outside those doors was slipping, or a prayer that she would give him permission to leave Starfleet outside.

"What did Sammy tell you when you spoke at length about _all_ the things you still had to do while we watched others dance in that courtyard?" The question threw him even more, drawing back those hazy memories of Veld that he ferociously protected. But, that wasn't what completely and utterly distracted him. It was the fact that she had asked him about one of Steve's memories without any hesitation, and as if she fully knew that they were _his_ memories, too.

He swallowed, throat suddenly dry as she looked up at him, that eyebrow still quirked defiantly. "If…" His voice had vanished again. Slightly mortified, he cleared his throat and tried to speak again. He noticed that it was a bit more gravelly and husky than he intended, but he was just happy he could speak. "If I remember correctly, he told me it could wait until tomorrow and handed me a beer." When she smiled and nodded, he realized he'd been backed into a corner. "That's your not-so-subtle way of saying that I should leave the rank outside. And normally, I'd be the first to agree with you, but - "

"Jim." She finally said, the smile fading. "Please. Just for tonight."

The last of his resolve crumbled in the wake of her plea.

He would tell her first thing in the morning.

Sighing, Jim rose his hands in surrender, taking a step back, hoping to clear his mind in the simulated night air. "Fine. Who am I to argue with the goddess of truth?"

Satisfied that she had officially won him over, Diana's grin returned. He half-expected the sun to rise behind her, but the fact that it remained the starry Paris night sky reminded him that they were in a simulation, not a fantasy. A simulation that she had asked Jaylah to craft for a reason.

"Good." She said, almost a little higher-pitched than he expected and perhaps even a little nervous. _She_ was nervous. As much as Diana ever _got_ nervous… "Because, I'd like to show you something."

Before he could ask her for clarification, she motioned for him to follow her as she walked towards the museum.

Dutifully, he followed after her. In the back of his mind, he knew they had to be walking down the length of the cargo bay, but it felt like he was stepping on concrete, walking through a historic landmark with a gentle breeze. It wasn't until he glanced up and noticed that a flag, the old French flag prior to the war, didn't move in the same breeze. It was static. Unnaturally so. Holograms were still stationary objects in this little play, but impressive ones nonetheless.

"I spent a long time in Man's World," Diana said as he caught up to her. She spoke calmly, with poise and focus that suggested she had spent some time crafting the words to follow. "And in that time, I was many things. Some good, some… more mundane. But, for much of it, I spent my time… alone."

The two of them came to a stop just past the glass features. He could see a small, eerily frozen crowd ahead. Their backs were to him.

"And I think that is what I was most afraid of when I returned home to Themyscira. When Kal came with me, he was mourning the loss of the only woman he had ever loved." Diana's voice grew thick for a moment. Concerned, Jim turned to face her and found that her eyes had gone glassy, warm with emotion. "I watched him for two hundred years on Themyscira, and in that time, he never opened his heart again. She was everything to him. And while I was Queen, I could understand that, because I had never let myself love in the same way as I did when I first met you." She blinked, a tear slipping down her cheek, curving towards the crook of her mouth. Jim began to reach for her, but she shook her head and kept herself at arms length.

"I need to tell you all of this, and it may not make much sense, even though I have considered it and rehearsed this as I have the speeches that drove my sisters to war and back." Diana's confidence shone through her words, even as her voice remained tight and thick from tears. "When you told me that you were Steve, I knew before you came from the Temple that I loved you. As Jim. And that profoundly frightened me, because I could only see myself like Kal. A lonely god amongst mortals. To love you, to ask you to stay with me... felt selfish."

Jim's heart ached for her, his fingers longed to brush those tears away. He had no way of knowing what she had planned to say, but to see her this upset was killing him.

But, she continued on.

"Almost losing you on Verex III reminded me that our time was already short, and it could be cut shorter. I already lost you once after just days…" She took a deep breath, eyes closing as a wistful smile graced her features. "And I treasured that love. To have it again, but to know it would be gone… "

"Diana, I understand what I'm signing up for," Jim tried to offer. "I want to give you whatever time I can - "

"When I lost Steve… _you_ …" She opened her eyes and Jim saw a look of such intensity he thought his knees were going to go weak. She looked angry, but… profoundly sorrowful. "In that explosion, when I saw the sky light up with the pestilence of war… a war that Ares only heightened, he did not truly begin…." She shook her head. "I hated humanity. I hated Man's World. I _hated_ and that surge ripped the godly power out of me and I unleashed it on the Germans. I nearly went down a path that I cannot return from, Jim." She wiped her tears away, voice steadying. "I loved people, but never the way I let myself love you. Love is both my greatest strength and my greatest weakness. I went into hiding for a hundred years because I did not wish to fly so close to the sun so that my wings would burn. And all of this…" She motioned between them. "Brought it all back, even if I didn't know _that_ was why I was so afraid."

"You're not like Ares…" He breathed. "Diana, you are nothing like your father or your brother - "

"But, I could have been." Diana said, taking a deep breath. "When I saw Ares on Khitomer, I found a very different god than I thought I would. He was bitter and tired. He had lost his daughter centuries ago." Her head shook slowly in something akin to disbelief. "And he was… strangely thankful that she was gone. Because it meant he didn't need to care about anyone else." She exhaled slowly, the emotional swell seemingly on the descent.

"And I realized how foolish I had been. I have never wanted to be a god. I have always wanted to just…. Be a good person. To love and live and cherish mortal lives because they deserve love. Everyone deserves love. To withhold that is the truly selfish task. And I love you." She met his gaze one last time."Jim, I want to experience as much of a life with you as I can... even if that time is short."

His heart thudded in his chest, as if to remind him he was still alive. If he'd known that she had been carrying all that baggage, he would have tried to help, but… how could he? She had clearly figured it out on her own, and he wasn't sure there would have been any way he could have done that for her.

"There is… a word in Jaylah's language. We spoke about it after…" Diana smiled a little, catching Jim's eye with a mischievous glint. "You eavesdropped."

"It was an accident…" He breathed, then realized what he was saying. "Although, I'm sure knowing I was trying to open the doors doesn't help, either."

She continued on, unfazed. "The word is _Laiya._ It took time for her to accurately describe it to me," Diana closed the distance between them and took his hand gently. With great care, she drew it to her chest and Jim's hand rested over her heart. He could feel her pulse beneath it. "But, it translates literally to Heart Alone. Contextually, it means a profound sense of being alone, being without the people that make your heart. Family, lovers…"

Jim rose an eyebrow. "Friends?"

Diana shook her head. "No. Her people do not see friendship the same as fealty. Her desire to call you family is something greater than friendship. And that is something I can understand." She smiled a bit. "There is a difference between missing friends and missing those who are a part of you, Jim. While Jaylah was on Altamid, then earth, she felt this way. Here, she feels her heart is full. She has family again. And that, too, I understand." She glanced around them, looking first at the pyramids, then over to the crowd in the distance. "I asked Jaylah to help me create my home the last time I had… family. Like this, like your crew. Because, I have kept everyone at arm's' length for so long…" She motioned with a nod of her head to the crowd. "They have all but been forgotten by your Federation. And soon, I may be the only one who knows them. But this way… so can you."

Diana's hand never left his. Instead, she curled her fingers around his and gently clasped his hand, leading him to the crowd. "This is not just Paris: It is Paris of 2017. It is the year that we formed the Justice League."

As Jim drew closer, he found himself recognizing the first figure, static and distinctly less grey. It was Kal… in the costume the records still had.

"Kal-El, the last son of Krypton. He was called Superman." They both knew that Jim recognized that much from the history books. But, the way Diana said it wasn't for their benefit. It was almost as if she was performing a ritual, to commit the title and the deeds of the man to the air around them, to the universe beyond. "While he was not the first to form the League, he stood in the light in a time when all of us worked in the darkness, even me." She motioned to the S on his chest, a crest that seemed almost too simple for the man that Jim had met. "The crest of the house of El. He gave us hope."

Diana motioned to a woman beside him. She stood tall and proud, but still seemed so petite beside Superman. In her business suit and some sort of old recording device pointed out, she looked as if she could conquer the world before breakfast. "And this was the love of his life: Lois Lane. Conner's mother. She could topple empires and build civilizations with the stroke of her pen. She was everything to him, and he was everything to her." Diana spared a glance over at Jim, catching his eye. "Spock and Nyota remind me of them in some ways. They felt no fear of the unknown."

Jim smiled softly, unable to stop himself. "Don't let Spock hear that, it'll go right to his head."

Diana chuckled, then continued walking with him. He took the opportunity to pull her a little closer so that her arm looped around his. As the two of them walked the courtyard, it was as if they were tourists reviewing great triumphs of human ingenuity. And they were.

"Bruce Wayne." The figure was dour, but there seemed to be a kindness behind those piercing eyes. "He felt so driven by the death of his parents in a city filled with crime that he turned himself into a symbol to fear, to enact justice. The Batman." She gently squeezed Jim's arm. "But, I saw kindness in him and a great suffering. He adopted many in his life, but eventually pushed them away. He was just as _Laiya_ as I had been once."

The man beside him towered over Jim, broad as a barn, and covered in scale-like armor. "Arthur Curry. King Orin of Atlantis. He was not known for striking alliances, but he was fearless, and brave beyond measure." She nodded to the woman in similar scaling, only a sea green. "As was his wife, Mera."

The tour continued. As it did, Jim found himself utterly floored and flattered by the intimate trip through her life. Barry Allen, the Flash. Victor Stone, the Cyborg. To Jim, they had been myths and all but forgotten. To Diana, they had been family.

They had fought and bled beside her, and had tethered her brilliant star to the earth for one brief, shining moment.

"What you did…" Jim finally breathed as she finished describing Victor's accomplishments, his later creation of the Titans, a group of young heroes that would one day include Conner. "What you _all_ did… is the stuff of legends. Your League saved earth from completely annihilating itself, and that sacrifice brought us all together to create a better world." He turned to look at her, only to find her watching the static figures again with her smile gone, replaced by barely contained… grief. "You miss them."

She took a deep breath. "Every day." She glanced over at him, then smiled. "But moreso, I long for what might have been. What they would say if they could see this world, see you. Kal remains sequestered on Themyscira, and I cannot share this with anyone else. I have no idea if Orin and Mera still live."

"Maybe, when we get back to earth…" Jim offered without thinking. "We can see Paris… than Atlantis. If you still remember how to get there."

Diana smiled. "I do. And I would very much like that, but…" She fully turned to face him. "Only if we go together. I have done so much alone, I forgot what it was like to have them. All of you, but _especially_ you, Jim, had reminded me of that."

She _still_ thought she needed to ask that of him? Jim didn't hold back this time. He reached out, cupping her face in his hands as he coaxed her closer. "Diana, I am never leaving you. This life or any other. I know one thing: I belong with you. We are better together. You make me a better friend, a better _leader_ , and I wouldn't trade that for anything. And I am sure that no matter what, if we take this jump, we will land on our feet. Even if I have to scour the galaxy every lifetime looking for you. Even if you've moved on, if I just get to be _near_ you. And I believe that with every fiber of my being." He chuckled a bit at the notion. "I've never loved anything more than being the captain of the _Enterprise_ , but I would give it all up in a heartbeat if you asked me to. But, I know you won't. That makes me love you even more."

Their lips met. He wasn't sure who had closed the distance first, but this time, there was no hesitation, no frantic need. He kissed her with the same purpose and care that he had in Veld, that he had in her quarters, and how he would kiss her every day of his life if he could.

One of his hands drifted from her cheek down to the small of her back, pulling her closer so he could feel her against him.

When their lips finally parted, the two of them breathless and smiling, he couldn't help but get another word in. "There is nothing I won't do for you." _Or to protect you_ … he thought.

Diana smiled warmly in a way that made him want to kiss it off of her lips. Before he could go back in for another one, however, she pulled something from her pocket. She tapped the button on the remote with her thumb, and the crowd of people disappeared. They were still in the courtyard, but now… he could hear music.

It was tinny, sounded like something out of an old phonograph from a lifetime ago, but still seemed to match the atmosphere.

"Then dance with me." She said softly as a voice began to filter through the courtyard in French.

 _Des yeux qui font baisser les miens  
_ _Un rire qui se perd sur sa bouche  
_ _Voilà le portrait sans retouche  
_ _De l'homme auquel j'appartiens…_

Jim grinned and didn't bother to suppress the chuckle that bubbled up. Without hesitation, he took a hand in hers and steered her around the courtyard. "Fair warning, I know how to do more than just sway." He said softly as the music grew to its chorus.

Diana simply beamed at him. "So do I."

 _Quand il me prend dans ses bras  
_ _Il me parle tout bas  
_ _Je vois la vie en rose_

As he spun her around the courtyard, steering her around with far more gusto and class than the Iowa boy pretended to have, he pulled her close again and kissed her once more.

The two of them danced in the moonlight of a Paris from long ago, but not so far after all. The starship was still outside those doors, along with all the problems of tomorrow.

But for tonight, the two of them were not captain and queen.

They were just Jim and Diana.

Two lovers dancing close together, enjoying a blissful reprieve before the real world came crashing back.

Because that was the whole point of dancing, after all.

For as long as the music played, they were the only two people in the galaxy.

And he would make sure she felt that way well into the early hours of the morning.


	46. To Save Today: Teaser

**To Save Today: Teaser**

Federation beds were not the same as the feather down and furs that Diana had been raised in on Themyscira, but they were synthetically comfortable. Her pillow was soft, the blankets were warm, and she could hear the steady hum of the ship all around her as it lulled her from a state of full, deep slumber to a light drowse.

The only thing that made her truly begin to wake was the sound of something... beeping.

Diana inhaled deeply, shifting onto her side just enough to open her eyes and glance around her. The chronometer glared at her with 0600 hours, Stardate 2264.105. The stars glittered in the viewport as if to welcome her to the new day. The third of such days enjoying comforts both synthetic and natural, more at peace than she had been in many years.

She had trained her entire life for a combat-ready alertness that forced her to awareness within microseconds. Even though her eyes were only half-open, it was more because she knew where she was and was at ease with her surroundings. Even though she had slept soundly and wished to cling to those last few minutes of relaxation, she knew that there was little point. If the chronometer was going off, it was morning by her standards. And Jim's. No sense in depriving herself of a mug of raktajino with the captain for a few more moments staring at the stars. They were not the subject of her interest this morning.

Slowly, she reached out to find purchase on the nightstand, intending to turn the chronometer off. She barely shifted, propping herself up on her elbow a bit before the weight in the bed behind her shifted with cat-like agility.

The warmth against her back reminded her of those natural comforts with a pleasant flush just as Jim rolled over to drape his arm over her body. He pressed his weight against her, sleepily turning off his chronometer with a grumble. He found her hand and laced his fingers with hers on the nightstand. Languidly, he drew her back away from the nightstand and firmly pulled her against him. As he did so, she didn't bother to hide the genuine grin that graced her features.

"Good morning," She whispered, enjoying the way he tucked her hand against her stomach and he held her close with a grip that was fairly impressive, considering she still knew she could get out of it. He just wanted her where _he_ felt like holding her. It was another pleasant reminder that she had spent the last two days with him, sharing warmth, learning their scars and curves.

And for the most part, not leaving the bed.

Jim's lips caressed her bare shoulder as he muttered against her skin in a more gritty, sleepy echo, "Good morning…"

As his lips left a trail of hot touches from her shoulder up along her neck, she forced herself to remember to breathe. He tugged her just a little bit closer, reminding her that had been nothing between them all evening… and the afternoon prior… and that morning before he had gone back to duty.

What Diana had not mentioned to Jim while they'd toured her past in Paris was that the crew had been aware of her plans at a basic level. Nyota had already convinced Spock and Doctor McCoy to issue a day of mandatory rest for the captain.

She couldn't say that they had done much _resting_ that day, but they both had certainly been relaxed and satisfied with each other by the time they finally slept. Yesterday, she'd nearly demanded another full day off from him, but he'd made a compelling argument that while she was off-duty, he wasn't.

Nevertheless, he had provided significant ammunition to fuel her idle mind and hands while he'd gone to the bridge. The crew, however, wanted nothing to do with him, and sent him back a few hours later. Nyota had called ahead long enough to tell Diana that he'd been so distracted with a "dopey smile" on his face that they'd kicked him off the bridge so they could finish their survey.

She had made significant use of the extra afternoon.

Jim's fingers untangled from hers, starting to drift along her bare hip, then down her thigh under the blankets, gleaning another grin from her. It seemed that he had no intention of letting either of them leave the bed for some time.

"Either you are insatiable," She said, unintentionally purring as she shifted to lay on her back and face him. "Or I am out of practice."

He beamed, leaning forward so he could now kiss her neck in earnest and shift his weight more. "Definitely the former, because you are certainly not the latter." He remarked. "Besides, every time I look at you, I just think about all of the times we _could_ have been doing this…" He planted a kiss on her neck, then began to drift a bit lower as he kept muttering against her skin. "Over… and over… and over…again…"

Diana laughed, not entirely sure if she cared to stop him and seize control of the moment, or if she would let that very silver tongue of his continue talking. It was safe to say that with three days to explore the new and the familiar, she had been able to securely come to grips with the fact that he was where her future would be.

Pun absolutely intended.

His mouth had done a phenomenal job of quieting any objections from her.

Unfortunately, the sudden grumble from his stomach objected without either of them having a say.

Diana's laughter dissolved into even more amused giggles, and she reached down, quite easily steering Jim off of her and back onto his side. She rolled to face him, but made sure to keep a bit of distance between them.

"Hey," He chuckled, trying to pull her closer, but finding that she had firmly pinned him in place with her hand casually on his shoulder. "You know, I was perfectly comfortable where I was."

She didn't relent. "When was the last time you ate, Jim?"

He pursed his lips a bit, considering his answer carefully with a little exhale that reminded her - pleasantly - of both the past and a present mannerism. "... I think yesterday," he said, waffling a bit. "But only because I count coffee as a meal."

Diana rolled her eyes, shaking her head. "You need to eat something." When he tried to get up again, she just kept him firmly against the bed. "Or I'll end up breaking you."

"Diana…" He breathed, straining to sit up, only to give up and remain in place with a huff. "I have above average stamina. I thought I had proven that."

"You have, but I also know that you are human. And you need to eat. At least I've took advantage of the mess hall while you were on duty."

"So, what you're saying is you cheated?" He said with a grin.

She laughed, slightly indignant. "I'm saying that…" She trailed off for a moment, an idea striking her. They both knew how to eat, and she had a feeling she could convince him. She let her hand slide from his shoulder to the side of his face. "I'm saying that normal people like to get up and have a breakfast." She reminded him of his unspoken promise in Veld. "I'd like a breakfast."

His eyes lit up and a crooked smile appeared on his features. "You're right. The newspaper might be hard to find, but a breakfast I can do." He slipped out of her grasp, rolling out of the bed and standing up so he could stretch. "Privileges of being the captain," He said as he took a few steps towards a door she'd never seen opened in his quarters. "Is that I have a kitchen."

Diana propped herself up on her elbows, watching him as he paused to stretch again, his back to her. Her eyes greedily took in the lines of his muscles, taut and yet not quite as battleworn as she had seen after their night in the inn. As Steve, he had been hardened by war, cut and chiseled. Jim was a bit less so. It was as if he had once been Laocoon in Rhodes and now was more like Michelangelo's David. The same refined muscles, but with slightly less definition.

It comforted her, in a way. It was a metamorphosis that reminded her that in giving his soul over to the gods, they had rewarded him with a life with hardship, but not so much as to chisel him into the haunted man she had known.

And she was absolutely, unabashedly staring at him.

Jim glanced over his shoulder and spotted her, head canted slightly as if she was in fact staring at one of the many works of art she had restored in her former profession. The grin he gave her was almost infuriatingly arrogant. "Sure you don't want me to come back to bed?"

Diana blinked, then pulled herself out of bed as well before she changed her mind about breakfast. "I'm going to take a shower. You.." She simply pointed at the kitchenette she could see beyond his… backside. "Are a distraction."

As she went in the opposite direction towards the bathroom, which was slightly larger than her own in the ambassadorial suite, she heard Jim remark, delightfully full of himself: "I am above average."

Once the door shut behind her, she wasted no time in getting the shower started. While she was tempted to take her time - and idly wondered if she should drag him into said shower - she forced herself to temper her passions and to simply get clean.

The two of them had spent the better part of the last 72 hours in that bed, or near that bed, and they needed to recharge.

Once she returned from the bathroom, she retrieved the dress and undergarments she brought in a quick trip to her quarters while Jim had been on-duty the day before. She dressed quickly, slipping the burgundy material over her head and tying the golden belt built into the waistline.

She had a feeling that she might not wear the dress for very long, but at least she could force Jim to eat something. She wasn't sure why, but something in her told her that the day was not going to be nearly as calm as the last two had been. Her sense of truth and intuition seemed to catch notes of some disquiet on the _Enterprise_ , but there was no telling where it came from.

That was part of the difficulty with wanting to help everyone: She still had to sort through the emotional turmoil on the ship to determine what she could assist with and what she couldn't.

"You're in luck," Jim's voice came from somewhere in the kitchenette. He'd apparently also chosen to dress - to some extent - with a pair of boxer shorts and a white T-shirt. Judging from the oil splatter near the stomach, she had a feeling he had elected to do so upon realizing that cooking was best done clothed. "I happen to be an excellent cook."

Diana quirked an eyebrow as she padded over to the doorway and watched him. The kitchenette was clearly designed for the captain's leisure time, not really for entertaining. That being said, beyond the small counter space where he had some sort of induction plate and a small thermo-warmer, there was a slim but tall refrigeration unit and a large dining table, easily big enough for four or five people.

"You are an excellent cook, yet you have a dining room that I've never seen used and you're constantly in the mess hall?" She asked, both teasing and skeptical.

Jim plated a few eggs, then pointed at her with his spatula. "You know why I eat in the mess. I don't like feeling like I'm some sort of ethereal creature that drifts through my own ship. I like meeting and getting to know my crew." He finished plating a few slices of bacon and then grabbed a couple of pieces of toast. "And yes, I am an excellent cook." He grabbed the plates and made his way back into the living area, setting their places down on the small table he normally used for coffee. "Way better than I was before."

"Before?" She simply muttered, a bit of a tease to her voice as she followed him over to the table.

Jim glanced over at her as he pulled a chair free for her. "You would not have wanted me to make breakfast back then. I'm sure you remember what MREs were like in the first world war. I'm surprised _I_ remember what they were like." Once she was seated and he settled in the other place across from her, she realized that the presentation was remarkably neat. She wasn't entirely surprised that he was more meticulous than he pretended to be. "Do you know what breakfast was like in the 1900s? Two words: Jellied. Meat." Diana's expression reflected the unpleasantness of that notion, which gleaned a laugh from him as he poured them both coffee from his carafe on the table. "Exactly." He said. "This, on the other hand, has the benefit of using some of earth's best ingredients and some of the more interesting ones we've gotten over the years. These are Ktarian eggs. They're bigger than chicken eggs and twice as healthy. The bacon is some of the best applewood smoked bacon from earth and the toast is Bolian seed bread."

Diana was struck by the... rightness of everything in that moment. He had brought the best foodstores he could so that he could impress her. Over breakfast. One of many things she had hoped they would share, that she had mourned as another lost opportunity.

The moment felt surreal.

"Unless… you want something else?" She couldn't remember Jim ever sounding _unsure_ of himself, not like this. There was something almost naive about it.

She quickly looked up at him, smiling and shaking her head. "No. It's perfectly normal. And that's… perfect." To illustrate the point, she took her fork and began to eat.

Jim relaxed a little as she took a bite of the seed bread. It must have been obvious how delicious everything was, because he started to laugh as she moaned happily over the toast.

"If this is how excited you get over toast, I can't wait for you to try the eggs." He said with a chuckle.

The two of them ate for a few moments in silence, save for the clinking of spoons in coffee cups and forks tapping plates. It was the most mundane, normal task, but both of them couldn't seem to stop smiling every time they looked at each other. She couldn't remember feeling quite so giddy in a long time.

About halfway through finishing off her eggs and about to ask for more bread when his communicator chirped. Since the crew knew to leave him alone - at Diana's request - it must have been important.

Furrowing his brow, he wound up reaching for his communicator with a full piece of toast still in his mouth. He waited to finish taking a bite before he answered. "Kirk here."

" _Cap'n. I finished compiling the briefing ye asked for."_ Jim's body language changed. He sat up a bit taller as Chief Engineer Scott continued. He sounded a bit more nervous than Diana would have expected for so early in the morning, but perhaps that was just because he was always so energetic. _"About, eh, Jaylah's power fluctuations. With the stellar cartography lab?_ "

Jim finished his bite of food and took a swig of coffee before he spoke. When he did, Diana heard nothing but the captain's authority. "Understood, Mister Scott. Ambassador Prince and I will be in the briefing room shortly. Please have everything ready."

" _Aye, sir."_

Jim snapped his communicator shut without much preamble, staring at the table for a long moment. His appetite was definitely gone.

Diana furrowed her brow. "Jim? What's wrong?" She could sense a subtle hint of guilt that rippled through him. Since their first evening, she'd been able to tell that they were more in tune than she'd thought they could be. But, he was holding something back.

"I have something to tell you. I know you asked me to wait, that you didn't want to talk about anything other than us, but…" He took a deep breath. "I need you to understand. Because this could go really wrong."

Her brow knit tightly in concern. Slowly, she reached out and took his hand across the table. "Just tell me, Jim."

So, he did.

* * *

 _48 HOURS LATER_

 _Stardate 2264.107_

" _McCoy to the bridge._ " The doctor's voice filtered over the bridge as they all stared down the three Romulan warbirds in the viewscreen. Below her, Sulu sat in the command chair, just as alert as she was. _"I have the captain."_

"How is he, doctor?" Sulu asked.

Diana gripped the railing, bracing herself against the startling reality before her.

" _He's dead."_


	47. To Save Today: Act I

**To Save Today: Act I**

 _Stardate 2264.105_

The joys of simple, normal breakfast, promises of the new future before them, seemed as distant as Olympus itself after Jim recounted his suspicions of the last few weeks. The two of them slipped into their oddly more comfortable routine of ambassador and captain without acknowledging the subtle change more than a quick sweep of the dishes from the table. There would be time to determine how breakfast would go in the future.

Diana's mind raced as she and Jim headed to the briefing room. She had been, for the most part, silent and obviously pensive after they had left his quarters.

Admirals in Starfleet possibly colluding with the Romulans, endangering their own citizens…

And Jim was certain Conner was the architect of it all. The man who had been a founding member of the Federation, that Diana had entrusted with the safety of earth.

She could sense that Jim believed that to be the truth.

Diana unequivocally knew that it was not. Whether it was her godly provenance or her own, very Amazon instinct and understanding of who Conner was, she didn't know. But, she could never believe that the son of Lois Lane and Kal-El could ever betray the planet that had he had nearly died for.

Convincing Jim would be trickier.

The two of them hadn't truly spoken regarding the fact that he'd been considering that theory for the last three days - or longer. As they were approaching the briefing room, she knew that however they walked into that room would set the tone for what came after. Regardless of how she felt about his theory.

"Jim, wait." Diana reached out to take his arm before he could get to the briefing room.

He turned to face her, but instead of the ironclad will of the captain, he looked a bit like a kicked puppy. He still felt guilty for not telling her about his concerns, even when she had explicitly asked him to set that aside for them.

"I am not angry with you." Diana said softly. She refused to let that be the foundation upon which their relationship was built. They trusted one another, they could share in their concerns, but they needed to have boundaries. "I might not agree with what you think Conner has done, but, I asked for you to set this aside until I could tell you how I feel. And you waited until you knew there was definitive information." Her hand slid from his elbow down to his hand, squeezing gently as she tried to catch those brilliant blue eyes of his. "I want to get to the truth just as you do. They need to know we have the same goal: The truth."

He clearly didn't like that answer and it took him a long moment scanning her features before he finally conceded. "We do…" He sighed. "Diana, I just don't know that you're going to like what the truth is. And to be honest..." He shrugged. "It's not actually up to you. Even if you believe him, he's still a Starfleet admiral. I have to turn the information over if we nail him to the wall."

Diana's stomach went cold as she recognized the tone. She'd heard it before, when they'd stood on a guard tower centuries ago and she had let her doubt that mankind could ever be so cruel plant her where she stood.

"I know," She finally said, starkly reminded that they would be stronger together, rather than apart. Even if they disagreed. "All I ask is that we give him a chance to explain, and that we make no judgements before we've heard all the evidence."

After a long moment, Jim nodded. "Then, let's see what they've found."

As they entered the briefing room, Chief Engineer Scott, Doctor McCoy, and Commander Spock had taken up their usual places around the briefing room table, and each of them had a data padd in hand. They wore their concern plainly, sitting up a bit straighter as they noticed Diana beside him.

"Gentlemen," Jim said with a nod. "Mister Scott, are the communication interfaces in the briefing room disabled?"

Diana quirked an eyebrow at him, surprised by the request. It seemed, however, that Scotty was not. He simply said, "Aye, sir."

Jim took his seat at the end of the table and Diana followed so that could take a seat beside Doctor McCoy. He nodded to her, but otherwise didn't acknowledge her presence. From the way his brow was furrowed, he was deeply troubled but didn't want to begin speaking for fear that he could not stop.

"As I'm sure Mister Scott told you, I have reason to believe that we have been compromised by someone within Starfleet. We've had a number of serious breaches to our security in the last few months and our crewmembers have been placed in danger for reasons that I think might be related. I asked all of you to comb through our recent missions since Diana came on board because I'm afraid her presence might have been an inadvertent catalyst in all of this." Jim folded his hands in front of him on the table, leaning forward a bit as he carefully avoided Diana's gaze. Since resuming his captain's duties, he had firmly stepped back into the role and refused to give anything away that might compromise them both.

It was a gesture both appreciated and needed. After the last few days, it was critical that they both continue to function as partners in front of the crew. And for themselves.

"What I do know," Jim continued. "Is that we first encountered a Romulan warbird outside of the Eos system that shot down my shuttle, and ever since that one got away, they keep turning up like bad pennies. They've attacked innocent people, they've somehow gotten hold of our command codes, and while I'd like to think it's _not_ related, I sincerely believe that the Romulan assassin on Khitomer was not an isolated event, nor was Jaylah's kidnapping. So what we need to figure out is what might be going on. And I'm afraid it starts with Starfleet. So, let's break it down." He motioned to Scotty. "Mister Scott, I'd like you to begin. I think your expertise will prove to be the most substantive in this case."

Diana fought a slight smirk as Scotty sat up a bit more, as if he hadn't expected to be called upon first.

"Right, well..." The engineer ran through the display on his data padd, then tapped a couple of buttons on the table console. "I've examined every mission we've had since we first made it to the Eos system. Quite a bit of it has had no tactical advantage that I can think of. But," Diana's breath caught in her throat as she saw the gleaming planet of Themyscira appear before her on the display. "I dinnae think it would be a bad idea to start at the beginnin'. It would have been coincidence that the Romulans found the planet at the same time we did, and they would have been looking for somethin' else. They're not known for caring about stellar phenomena, so the transition of the star would've gone unnoticed. What _wasn't_ unnoticed, however," Diana watched as several red blips appeared on the planet's surface. The chief stood and began to make a slow half-circle around the briefing table as he kept talking. "Were the subspace relays that the Themyscirans built all over the place. I think by letting them go so that we could stabilize the atmospheric barrier, we gleaned more knowledge about how it works than the Romulans could have in the same timeframe, but they took their limited knowledge with them."

"The Romulans haven't come back to Themyscira, have they?" Diana asked, more than a little concerned. They had left the planet to its planetary defenses, but it was a fragile balance.

"No. Our last reports from Federation probes show that the barrier's intact and completely impenetrable by our sensors." Scotty said with a comforting smile. "I figured ye'd ask the question so I checked already. 'Sides, soon as we can get back to that end of things, I wanted to research the barrier in depth. But, I cannae advise we do such a thing until we're sure the ship's secure."

Jim tapped his finger on the table idly as he listened. "So, you're sure the ship's compromised?"

"Absolutely." Scotty replied, a bit more gravel in his voice than he may have intended. It hammered home his conviction within moments, though. Diana found herself watching him with the same fervent attention she had given her team over the years. "Once I realized that warbird could have gotten this whole thing started, I began to check when our database records were accessed by Starfleet. I dinnae have the clearance to see who, but I know what was accessed and when. Every mission related to Diana seems to have been downloaded. It happened most often when we docked at _Yorktown_ , but Themyscira, the Altheans and Circe's stone technology - "

"I'd say it's more of a poison," McCoy interjected, holding up his datapadd. He had come to the similar conclusion, apparently. "Someone at Starfleet accessed all of my logs on the Medusa incident."

Scotty nodded, conceding the point, then continued on. "Delphi and the Nexus, too, it was all there. Everythin' we've done since bringing Diana onboard has been watched and downloaded by someone in Starfleet."

Diana was hardly surprised that Spock offered his thoughts next. Unfortunately, his thoughts were playing devil's advocate. "It would be standard Starfleet procedure to examine the captain's logs after we dock."

"Aye, it would be, not directly from the ship's computers via our _command_ codes." Scotty switched the display, showing an ever-changing set of numbers. They flashed through iterations within microseconds, never stopping. It was encryption to scramble the numbers. "These are our current codes. Wee man and I wrote them to stop the Romulans from going through our shields, but I cannae stop them from getting back into our database. These captain's logs weren't just accessed while we were remote, someone went directly into the _Enterprise_ database and through my new command codes." Scotty set his padd down, propping one clenched fist onto his hip almost jauntily as he leaned against his chair. "Now, I've been asking for new command codes for weeks. I thought they downloaded and implemented them while we were back on Earth." He pointed to the display. "But, that's my program. No new codes were given."

Spock rose an eyebrow. "Were you informed that the command codes had not been received?"

Scotty shook his head. "Even worse, my request has been _deleted_. From _our_ databanks."

"How is that possible?" Diana asked. "If you have scrambled the codes, would you not have been present to delete the records?"

He sighed, a bit more contrite as he glanced over at her and shrugged. "I'm good. But, whoever they are, they're better. I've never seen encryption like this. It's..." He seemed to be at a loss. "The kind of thing that Starfleet Intelligence encryptors know how to do. I'm not a security expert. Eventually, my code will always be cracked."

"Is that how they got the worm into the ship's systems?" Jim asked.

"Aye, I think so. They waited until ye started accessing information a little too close to what they've been trying to steal from the Federation and began to delete our entire A.R.G.U.S. database - "

"Did you say A.R.G.U.S.?" Diana blurted out. Judging from the look on Jim's face, he had expected the information, but he had neglected to mention it to her. Frowning, she tore her gaze from the captain and turned her attention to Scotty. "The only reason someone would want to come through old A.R.G.U.S. projects is if they are looking for information relative to myself or the Justice League."

The chief engineer seemed to agree. "Oh, aye. I checked my historical backup, and most of the records deleted involved you. I suppose that might be because there were so few intact." He glanced over at Jim, worry coloring his features a bit more. "There's more. Before Jaylah's power fluctuations hiccuped the worm, it had started to chew through her personal logs. Looks like it was designed to erase any of her research but didn't know how much of it she had offline."

"Implying that someone does not wish for her to continue her work," Spock said, steepling his fingers together as he considered the possibility. "If she was kidnapped in order to silence her from further work, it may have been because the Romulans believed they had retrieved the intelligence they needed."

"But, she told me she never created anything on the scale that she did this time." Diana said, recalling her prior conversations with Jaylah. "Nothing more than say, big enough for a breadbox."

"Perhaps the spies felt that this was sufficient." Spock replied. That thought made Diana's stomach turn even more. They had been willing to throw Jaylah's brilliant mind, her very life, away, all for an edge in yet another Cold War.

She would not see that happen again.

"So, someone, probably at admiralty level, has access to the ship, to our records, and doesn't want us to know that the Romulans are after something more intense than their current cloaking technology." Jim said as he motioned for Scotty to take a seat. "And Jaylah was kidnapped and sent off to die, presumably because they don't want anyone replicating the technology she built in prototype at the Academy." Jim frowned. "But, how does Khitomer connect to all of this?"

Diana thought back to the outpost, its wild and untamed people in the throes of a difficult alliance. "I think I may have an answer to that..." She added, not necessarily unsure, but still trying to puzzle it all out. "When I met Ares, he told me that he had no interest in what the Romulans were doing. He said they were busy stirring up the 'pot' with a number of races. And Colonel Worf stated that the Klingons wanted the Alliance with the Federation because the Romulans had recently turned on them." She turned to look over at Spock. "Perhaps Motar was not directly there because of me, but for these greater machinations. Perhaps the Romulans want the Klingons to be as isolated as possible so they will not help the Federation when they attack." The more she spoke, the more she could sense the ring of truth itching at the back of her senses. "The Romulans want to take the Federation, not the Klingon Empire. They only want to ensure we have no allies left."

"Even so, we don't know which admirals are doing this." Jim said with a frown. "We're still missing something. Kent wanted me off of the ship, cut loose from Starfleet. He wanted me out of the way for this little game the Romulans are playing."

"Jim, it may not be possible to receive the confirmation that you wish." Spock remarked, glancing over at him. "Even if you have suspicions based on your time in San Francisco, it may not be Admiral Kent's doing."

"Then, how do we find out?" Diana asked, posing the question that no one seemed to want to ask. It wasn't until they all turned to look at her that she realized - with a note of exasperation - why. She sighed, frowning and crossing her arms over her chest. "I am not so naive as to think that we will solve this by talking. I am not afraid of the truth, even if it is not an outcome I hope for. We must confirm Jim's suspicions, one way or another."

The group fell silent, but not for long.

Jim stood and braced his hands on the briefing table, a slight air of mischief and wit about him. "I have an idea for that."

* * *

 _Stardate 2264.106_

Diana's spot on the bridge seemed somehow less welcoming when she knew what was about to occur. Jim's plan was more than risky, it was suicidal. But, ultimately, she agreed with him, even over Scotty and Doctor McCoy's objections. Spock had been more logical in his assessment and eventually conceded the captain's point.

Nevertheless, the information was limited to the five of them. Hikaru, Jaylah and Nyota had all been told nothing. It had been quite touching, if not troubling, that even though the captain clearly was keeping something from them, they had obeyed his orders.

Even when he had ordered them to a heading that would cross the Romulan Neutral Zone.

Even as the Enterprise stared down three Romulan warbirds that had decloaked within moments of the ship breaching the border.

Even as he told them to keep shields up, but to power down the weapons. He would be cooperating with the Romulans, should they be willing to talk.

"Captain, we're being hailed." Nyota's voice was tight with worry, but she covered it well. It was more Diana's sense of empathy and acute sensitivity to emotions rather than vocal tones that told her how concerned the lieutenant was. She was inclined to agree.

"Put it onscreen, Lieutenant." Jim replied without missing a beat. He stood from his chair with that easy, fluid single step she'd come to expect. His body was taut like a wire, stock straight and ready to move. Beside him, Spock had left the science station and gone to join him.

It took everything in her to remain at her vantage point on the bridge and to not join them. Even the doctor had been told to remain in Sickbay, much to his protesting.

The viewscreen quickly flashed away from the starscape ahead of them to present a tall, imposing Romulan woman. She wore her hair so long it tumbled down her shoulders, but her ears were adorned with golden cuffs at the top of the lobes.

 _"I am Commander Linvah. You have breached the Neutral Zone and entered Romulan Space. This act could be considered a statement of war. Explain your presence here."_ The woman conveyed a sense of command while far more cold and calculating than Diana had expected. She recognized it as a skill that Lex Luthor had used with aplomb: the double meaning. As he spoke, he calculated the next twelve moves, for he saw all of life as one great chessboard.

"I apologize, Commander Linvah. I am Captain James T. Kirk of the _U.S.S. Enterprise._ " Jim replied, careful to keep his tone neutral and almost a bit too charming. If Diana had not been worried that this would all fall apart within moments, perhaps she would have found it more amusing. Unfortunately, the fact that he took pains to identify himself and the ship to the commander only gave the rest of the crew a sense that something was very wrong. "Our navigational system seems to have malfunctioned and we drifted off-course. We had no idea we'd crossed into Romulan space, but we will gladly rectify that and turn back around."

 _"You will not."_ Commander Linvah simply replied, looking them over with dark, scrutinizing eyes. _"If your systems are so faulty, then we will gladly escort you back to Romulus, where you will be interviewed and your ship checked for any... questionable contents. You understand that we must take precaution. Prepare to be boarded - "_

"Commander Linvah, I don't know if you're familiar with Starfleet protocol, but under no circumstances will I allow you to board my vessel." Jim clasped his hands behind his back, as if he were chatting about the weather. "But, even with such a... charming offer of assistance, I do not have the authority to hand over Starfleet technology into your hands. And should you attempt to do so, we will be forced to destroy the ship."

Linvah rose an eyebrow, seemingly unfazed but perhaps intrigued. Diana's stomach swam uncomfortably with the profound... _deception_ of it all.

"But, how about I offer a truce? If you would like to communicate back to Romulus so that the formal Romulan ambassadors and the Starfleet ambassadors can meet on neutral ground to discuss getting us back across the border... we would be willing to have an exchange." Jim motioned to himself and then to Spock. "My first officer and I would be more than happy to discuss this in person."

"Captain..." Nyota protested under her breath as Sulu and Jaylah turned to face their captain, ready to burst.

Diana caught Jaylah's eye and shook her head, trying to catch her before she gave away the subterfuge. And not a moment too soon. Linvah seemed to be considering the offer.

 _"Very well. I will arrange for two of my centurions to beam aboard your vessel. In return, the two of you will come here and we will speak. But, I warn you, my patience has limits. I will not indulge in idle gossip forever."_ The Romulan turned to a console on her spartan bridge and tapped a button. _"Prepare yourselves."_

With that, the communication cut. No sooner than the woman's face was gone, Jim relaxed visibly just long enough for the rest of his bridge crew to come after him.

"Are you kidding me, sir?" Hikaru said with more passion and fervor than DIana had heard from him before. "For all we know, they'll take you and blow us up!"

"And you _volunteered_ Spock for this?" Nyota was just as incensed as Diana expected. "Romulans and Vulcans have been sworn enemies for millenia, you have no idea what she'll - "

Jim rose his hands to silence them both. If he was curious as to why Jaylah had remained silent, he didn't ask. But, Diana knew. She still held the ensign's gaze, silently pleading for her to trust Jim.

"Objections noted, but this isn't up for debate. Mister Sulu, you have the conn." Jim turned to Spock, motioning to the turbolift. "We need to get moving."

Without waiting for an invitation, Diana followed after them into the turbolift. While she had been very accustomed to issuing orders and carrying through difficult tasks over the centuries, she had always found it difficult to ignore the pull of her heart on such matters. In fact, she had never been afraid to voice objections when she felt necessary.

"This could still go very wrong," Diana remarked as soon as the lift was in motion, echoing Jim's sentiment from a few days before in his quarters. She stopped short of voicing her more personal objections to the transfer. She had agreed to the plan before… now, she found herself thinking of how deeply it had shaken her to lose him once.

"I know." He replied, glancing over at her. Hearing his voice, so confident yet… aware of the risk, helped to quell her fear. For now. "But, it won't. I'm absolutely certain we'll be fine."

"It is statistically impossible for you to be 'absolutely certain' about any one course of action, Jim." Spock said over Jim's other shoulder.

Diana fell silent as she felt for her lasso beneath her jacket. She didn't know if it was in a search for the truth… or comfort. Yet, it reminded her that she still had a part to play in this drama. Once they had agreed to this particular course of action, she had made sure to wear her armor underneath her ambassadorial clothes. If the Romulans did not honor the transfer, she would disavow them of the notion that deception was acceptable. With great prejudice.

They reached the transporter room a few moments later where Scotty was already waiting for them.

As Jim and Spock made their way over to the chief engineer, he had two communicators - non-Federation - held out to either of them. "Here. These should work just fine through the Romulan shields, if needed. They're modeled after the communicators that Jaylah designed on Altamid. Just... be careful. I've no idea if they'll know about these."

Jim nodded and clapped him on the shoulder. "As usual, Mister Scott, you are a spring of optimism."

The two men made their way to the transporter pad. For a moment, Diana remained planted on the carpet before them, knowing that it was her duty to wait for the transfer to take place and to ensure peace while they were gone.

But, that had not been the first time she had been told by the man with such kind eyes that she was to remain behind on a journey where she could not follow.

Diana crossed the distance and stepped up onto the transporter pad, pulling Jim close. In that moment, he was the only one in the room, and she would be sure to remind him that he needed to return. She kissed him passionately, knowing full well that this could be the last time. Again.

When they finally broke apart, Jim was panting and looking a bit less collected than he probably wanted to be. "I... okay..." He breathed.

"I just want you to remember that." She finally said, offering an explanation as she kept her hands on his shoulders. As they had embraced, his hands had slipped up to her face again. It was as natural as breathing for both of them. "Just in case you consider doing something foolish." She finished, then finally pulled away.

"Compelling argument…" Jim said dumbly.

As she finally stepped back onto the carpet, she barely caught the look Spock was giving Jim with his eyebrow raised higher than she could ever recall seeing it. Meanwhile, Mister Scott's jaw had gone so slack, she was sure he would dry out his tongue.

Diana cleared her throat loudly, a move that Jim echoed.

"Mister Scott," Jim said after a long moment. "We are ready to beam over."

"A-Aye, sir," Scotty said, still thrown by Diana's remarkably unrestrained moment of passion. "Beaming ye aboard... now..."

Diana clenched her hands into fists at her sides as she saw Jim and Spock disappear in the shimmer and swirl of the transporters. As the pads went dark, she felt her heart clench as she considered that no one else had come through on the other end. Would the Romulans betray them after all?

When the pads lit back up and she watched two Romulan Centurions arrive, she realized that if she was hoping for absolute truth and certainty with Jim's safety... she would not find it here.

* * *

 _Stardate 2264.107_

Eighteen hours after she had watched Jim and Spock deliver themselves over to Romulan custody, the bridge was fraught with panic. Commander Linvah had simply hailed the _Enterprise_ to state that the captain would be beamed back to the ship and that Commander Spock would remain aboard with her.

Everyone waited with bated breath for the doctor to confirm the supposed transport.

" _McCoy to the bridge._ " The doctor's voice filtered over the bridge as they all stared down the three Romulan warbirds in the viewscreen. Below her, Sulu sat in the command chair, just as alert as she was. _"I have the captain."_

"How is he, doctor?" Sulu asked.

Diana gripped the railing, bracing herself against the startling reality before her.

" _He's dead."_

The three senior crewmembers turned to look at each other, stricken. Time slowed to a crawl as Diana crossed the length of the bridge in nearly the blink of an eye. By the time they had heard the sound, the turbolift doors were already closing. Diana was already gone.

The doors opened on the medical deck, and Diana sped with the fury of the gods. Lighter than Hermes, more thunderous than Zeus himself. She barely had time to skid to a halt before the double doors to Sickbay opened and she slid into the room.

"Leonard!" She called, her heart in her throat. They had talked about the risks, they had discussed the plan.

But, what if it had gone wrong?

A monitor was flatlining somewhere in Sickbay, but not in the primary wing before her. McCoy's office doors were closed, but she could hear his voice, somewhat muffled, from somewhere in the bay.

Diana's will carried her clear across the room into the newly refurbished secondary, critical wing. The room had been destroyed in Vanessa's rampage all those months ago, and now housed the best Starfleet medical technology that the _Yorktown_ had to spare.

And one of those highly specialized monitors kept wailing.

But, not because of her fear that Jim would be prone on the biobed, charred by disruptor fire or worse.

He was standing beside the biobed, holding one of McCoy's sensors in his hand. It should have been placed on his forehead and as a result, was causing the terrible squeal from the monitors. Whether he had worn it at all and taken it off, or if he had been in the process of arguing with the doctor, she couldn't tell.

Until she saw Leonard's scowl and Jim's roguish grin when he saw her.

"Aren't you a sight for sore eyes," Jim said, clapping the sensor into McCoy's hand and crossing the room. As if it had been months, not hours, he swept her into his arms and embraced her, burying his face in her neck for a long moment.

Her brow furrowed in concern as she returned the hug. It wasn't Jim's first spy game in any lifetime, yet he seemed reluctant to let go. "Jim, are you alright?"

Jim stiffened a bit. She could catch the brief flicker of embarrassment, although she wasn't sure how she knew. He seemed as in command as ever.

"It was a little hairy over there." He finally said as he pulled back, resuming a more professional distance between them. "The Commander's taken an interest in Spock, so we're using it to our advantage."

"An interest?" Diana said, crossing her arms over her chest as she tried to stifle her worry. "How so?"

"Ah…" Jim tilted his head, clearly trying to find a way to be delicate. "Let's just say she's fascinated with what makes him Vulcan and her Romulan. And she's interested in crossing that distance with… Spock embracing his wild side. If he has a wild side."

"You can't possibly tell me someone other than Uhura finds that pointy-eared statue romantically attractive?" McCoy blurted, incredulous.

"Look, I don't pretend to understand all the details," He replied. "The point is, the plan worked. He kept the Commander distracted long enough for me to use this - " He pulled the communication device that Scotty had given them before. "To scramble their medical sensors while Spock put me in some sort of trance. They thought I was dead, I was sleeping. With the 'captain' gone, he should be able to convince Linvah that they only need one of the warbirds to escort us, not all three."

Diana furrowed her brow as she found that the answers she had hoped for strangely did not comfort her. But, she kept her reservations to herself for the moment. Besides the trio in sickbay, only Chief Engineer Scott and Spock knew the depth of their plan. It had gone so well, she felt that to mention her concerns would invite… complications.

Instead, she turned her attention to the next phase. "Were you able to confirm that these vessels are Tal Shiar, not simply scouts?"

Jim nodded, pulling a patch from his pocket. When he held it up, she recognized the symbol from the Federation databanks. "Spock handed this to me before he used the meld to knock me out. Said he found it in Linvah's quarters."

Diana arched an eyebrow the same as McCoy. The doctor almost sounded impressed. Almost. "Didn't think the fella had it in him to lie and worm his way into a lady's quarters. "

"I'll be sure not to tell Nyota you think she is so easily wooed," Diana remarked, a moment of brevity in all of the darkness.

"It's the Aquila." Jim interrupted them both before their battle of wits could begin again. "Symbol of the Tal Shiar. Linvah absolutely came here to take the _Enterprise_ as a trophy."

Diana took the patch from him to examine it. "The same term used by the Roman Empire on Earth. Ares may not have had a direct hand in their creation, but something tells me this was his idea. The secret police to sow discord?" She scoffed and shook her head. "More like his own pet project got out of hand."

"I don't know, Diana, their interest in us seems more… conventional." Jim crossed his arms, continuing his intelligence briefing while they had the time. If he was thinking about anything other than the events of the last day, he was careful not to give that away."What Spock could access suggests we're right. Someone's been sending messages to the ship from Federation space, but he couldn't figure out how. The Commander didn't give him enough time to get that far, but he said it looked like the messages went back as early as the MACO days. That lines up with when Conner joined Starfleet."

"That could line up with any Augment that may have survived the war." Diana reminded him. She knew that there was an element of denial to her tone, but she was still not convinced. "So, in either case, you will need proof."

"Which is why I'm going back." Jim said, turning to McCoy. "So, we better get started before anyone wonders why we're not turning over one of their Centurions."

McCoy nodded, making his way over to a set of tools he'd assembled before Jim's arrival.

Diana's stomach writhed as she considered the deceit she would be asked to perpetuate. Before he could try to take her mind off of it with a smooth word or two, she turned to face him fully. "Jim, you should let me tell the crew - "

"No, Diana." Jim clearly had no room for argument. "I know you hate to lie, but if Linvah contacts you, I need to know Sulu and Uhura will be able to do this. And the best way to convince them is to keep them out of the loop."

"But, Jim - "

"No." He shook his head again, then backpedaled towards McCoy. "Until further notice, Jim Kirk is dead. Now, please, head to the transporter room. I need you to make sure the coast is clear."

She had agreed to the plan once. And even if she did not like the idea of putting Jim and Spock into such danger, she knew that the answers were aboard that ship. She had to trust that he could do this.

When he arrived in the transporter room twenty minutes later, clad in one of the Centurion uniforms and cosmetically altered to look just like a Romulan, she told herself that her trust would be repaid in kind.

Not by Jim, but by the gods themselves. They would help him to the truth.

Or she would wrest it from the hands of Fate itself.


	48. To Save Today: Act II

**To Save Today: Act II**

 **Author's Note:** Fun bit of trivia for those who are interested: This episode is roughly based on the Enterprise Incident! I say roughly because this is where the similarities end, but the character of Commander Linvah is named after the woman who played the Romulan commander in the episode, Joanne Linville. The character's had many names in Trek books, but I went with something a bit more simple than the other ones. In addition, the quote on Diana's sword is canon, based on the sword seen in BvS and Justice League. It's from Joseph Campbell's _The Hero's Journey,_ which is not coincidence... And there is your dose of trivia! Also, you may have guessed that this is much like Personal Logs of an Above Average Man, in that this entire episode is from Diana's POV.

* * *

Diana had been forced to do nothing but wait.

She waited for an ensign to bring up a satellite feed of the viewscreen on the bridge. She then waited for Scotty to mirror that visual feed to a console in the transporter room. Then, she waited for two of the warbirds to disappear in their cloak, presumably leaving as Spock would have requested by now.

Worst of all, she waited for Jim to survive.

Once the ships were gone, the transporter pad dark, and no further distractions, Diana realized that she could not return to the bridge. She would have to wait elsewhere. If she returned to the bridge, Jaylah or Nyota would most certainly corner her. They would demand an explanation, or worse, they would ask her how she was handling Jim's "death."

She was not overly fond of reliving those moments after she had lost Steve, nor did she have any desire to write a eulogy for Jim, even if it was a fictitious one.

Humans were so fond of courting the Fates, begging them to cut their Thread before its time. Steve Trevor, Jim Kirk, Kal-El, _Bruce Wayne,_ they were all the same in that regard.

Jim could die at any moment. They had taken the leap, she had shared that which was most precious to her - the cherished memories of her last true family. And no sooner than she had done so, his duty, their mutual calling for justice and compassion, made her realize that he might find himself making good on his promise to crawl his way out of Hades and to the next life sooner rather than later.

Their mornings in bed together seemed to be lifetimes ago instead of simply days.

Returning to her quarters, Diana found herself surrounded now by the stark reminder that without Jim around, very little gave her comfort.

She had kept her walls bare. On Themyscira, she had been careful to keep her adornments appropriately majestic, to rival the chambers she had been reared in by her mother. She kept the same furs and golden plate tablets detailing the history of her people in the queen's chambers, but such comforts were now light years away, protected by the very technology Jim hoped to keep from the Romulans.

Without Themyscira herself, Diana's quarters were the textbook example of Starfleet efficiency. Even ambassadorial quarters such as hers were spartan and driven around the utility of deep space exploration.

Only now, as she found herself drawn to the simple desk where she kept her few keepsakes, did she wish for more of her precious photographs and ancient treasures from Man's World. One of Lois's many pens, left at Diana's apartment because she was called to another story, or the lightning bolt that had chipped off of Barry's helmet in their fight against Darkseid when he had taken a blow to save her from a more critical strike.

As it stood, her only reminders of the Justice League, of her family, were the holograms that were dormant in the consoles of Cargo Bay 1. And they could not help her here. The halls of justice had once been filled with joy and comfort. Now... was there even anything left of Wayne Manor? Or had Bruce's legacy truly turned to ash in the days after the Eugenics War?

Strangely, it was thinking of her most complicated friendship that brought her peace. She would never be like Bruce. And if his legacy had burned, then she would build a better one in the coming days. Even when she had stopped him from martyring himself before the Great Cause, he had slipped into those old habits and let his son pay the price.

Diana did not need homely comforts to remind her why she and Jim fought for the fate of humanity. She only needed to remind herself that she did not believe in just getting the job done.

She had a team, a family now. The crew of the Enterprise all worked together.

Jim and Spock would work together. And if they called, she would certainly answer.

Her communicator chirped in her pocket. Her stomach swirled unpleasantly as she steeled herself for one of her friends asking if it was true, if the captain was dead. She believed in the truth… and Jim believed that they would be better with the lie.

She couldn't ignore them. Taking a deep breath, she flipped open the device and kept her voice soft, but didn't bother to conceal her real worry. It lent an edge of sorrow to her voice. "Diana here."

" _It's Nyota. Is he…"_ Diana closed her eyes for a moment, stomach swirling at the barely contained grief from her Sister. _"You didn't come back up to the bridge, so I hoped…"_

She pressed the communicator to her chest, as if to give her the embrace she couldn't. _Jim, I trust you. I trust that you trust them. But, by the gods, this is difficult._ She couldn't avoid it. But, she didn't have to draw it out.

"Jim is gone, sister…" She finally answered, using the vagueness of her exact words to her advantage. It hurt less. But, she also knew that if she kept the line open, Nyota would pull at her greater conscience and she would confess. "I will be… in my quarters for the time being. I am sorry, I just… need to think. Prince out." She quickly finished in a jumble of words before clapping the communicator shut.

She had to hope it was convincing.

The truth was, she wasn't sure how Jim was doing. She only had her belief that she would _know_ if he was gone to keep her from losing control.

Diana turned her attention to the drawer of trinkets at her desk. After a moment of consideration, she pulled free the watch that Steve had given her all those years ago. Jim deserved to see it with fresh perspective. The promise of such an occasion would have to fuel her through the painful hours of waiting before his first check-in.

Of course, she realized with a sigh, that would not occupy her idle hands. Nor her idle mind. While she could replay those two days and nights of bliss with Jim, it would not help her remain prepared for battle. And even though she knew she needed to trust the captain and his first officer... she couldn't help but think that they would inevitably get themselves into trouble. She had _no_ evidence to suggest otherwise.

Diana's armor didn't seem to be as much of a comforting hug so much as inviting bad fortune, but she wasn't about to concede that point to the gods yet. If she could not bring herself to mourn like an ingenue in an opera, then she would fill the hours with time in her quarters preparing for the very real possibility that the Romulans might catch Jim.

No matter what, she would ensure their safety, and she would help him find the evidence regarding the possible Starfleet spy.

The first step in preparing for battle was to care for her equipment, then. The thought was another brief comfort, one that she would indulge. When she wasn't wearing her armor, the worn and battle-scarred material remained hung in a wardrobe in the corner. As she strode over to it and opened it up, she spotted her small pouch that she had chosen not to loop her belt through today, as well as her sword and shield.

Diana pulled the weapons free easily, bringing them over to the couch and setting them down. She rifled through the pouch for a moment, freeing the sharpening stone she had used since the old days. A coarse rag fell free afterwards before she set the pouch down on the coffee table with care.

Gripping the shield in one hand, she hoisted it aloft and looked it over in the light. The metal had begun to grow dull, its luster dulled by the disruptor scorching on Verex III. She had meant to care for it sooner, but had no time to do so on Khitomer, either.

She ran the rag along the rim, then worked her way inwards to clean each of the ancient symbols, the most primordial of Koine Greek letters. It would be through these words that the Amazons would teach men to write and communicate as part of their great mission. It would later be those same letters that would be used to bind women in Athens to chains of a system that perpetuated throughout Greece.

The inscription became more and more clear as Diana polished. As it did so, the words tumbled around in her mind as she lost herself in the simple, menial task. Blessings of the gods that were meant to comfort the warrior who wielded the weapon. Diana found little comfort in the gods, only more questions.

But, perhaps, if she prayed enough, Athena would one day grace her with her presence and finally explain why she had abandoned Diana and her people for nearly two centuries, scattering the gods across the cosmos like leaves on the wind.

Diana turned her attention to the eagle relief in the center of her shield and furrowed her brow. Thoughts of the gods were replaced with thoughts of the Tal Shiar, of the Romulan Empire. They, too, utilized the eagle as a symbol of their superiority, their righteousness.

The Romans had also thought themselves superior and righteous conquerors of Man's World. Perhaps... perhaps someone else would have recognized the similarities between the cultures. The Nazis had co-opted Roman superiority as part of the Aryan myth. The Augments had co-opted the Nazis as part of their perfection through genetics narrative. They knew that the communications had gone back as far as prior to the Federation's existence. For all they knew, it was someone whose goals predated the Eugenics War...

The rag slipped from Diana's hand as her heart threatened to stop beating.

Truth.

It had been as if someone had walked across her grave, or gripped her heart in their hand and squeezed. Her breath left her, her mind went blank save for the impossible.

She was somehow... some _way_... speaking - thinking - Truth. Divine truth.

"This grudge is old..." She breathed the assumption aloud, freeing it from her mind and letting it fill the air. She furrowed her brow as her blood pumped with the thrum of _truth.. truth_... _**truth**_. "This is about more than an arms race, someone has been orchestrating this for decades..." She continued, not entirely sure how she could have known such a thing. Even on Khitomer, she had not sensed the truth in the Romulan spy until it was nearly too late. But, with the Orion madam she had recognized it instantly.

She was growing more powerful. She had never asked for her divine gifts... but now, they were determined to shine light into the darkness.

"The person orchestrating this has been around since my days on Earth," She muttered, shaking her head at the impossibility of it. Barbara Ann was assuredly dead or had lost her humanity to Urzkartaga years ago. Circe was banished before the war...

But, Conner would never give over his home to the Romulans. _Never_.

The shield slipped from her hand, just enough to startle her, and she quickly caught it. Snapping out of her reverie, she set the weapon aside as the metal gleamed proudly back at her.

She reached forward for her sword in its sheath and pulled it free, holding it aloft to examine it as well. She caught the inscription as she turned the blade over in her hand, knowing the words by heart: the duality of Artemis. Both virgin deer and the hunter of the mighty deer herself, she was the image of self-creation through self-destruction. _Life kills life all the time. So, the goddess kills herself in the sacrifice of her own animal._

Diana had found the sword long after Ares had destroyed the God-killer, but even she did not know the true meaning of the blade's inscription. It was certainly a tale of sacrifice and rebirth. By sacrificing her own essence, Artemis fulfilled her true purpose as the great goddess of the hunt.

Yet, if it was meant to lead Diana down a particular path, she had never found what.

Leaning forward to grab her sharpening stone, Diana paused as she heard an insistent chirping noise. It wasn't the Federation communicator in her pocket, it was something else.

Reaching into her pocket, she realized that she had the last of the communicators that Scotty had provided the team. Glancing over at her chronometer, she realized that time had passed faster than she realized. It was time for Jim's check-in. In fact, he was a few minutes late.

Diana opened the device and depressed the button to accept the covert hail. She could only hope that Jim was on the other end. "Yes?"

 _"I am unspeakably happy that you decided not to ignore this communicator. Do I need to tell Bones the next time he wants to see you to just use this obnoxious little thing?"_ Jim's voice was low, clearly intended not to carry further than the device probably in his hand, but his full bravado and humor were certainly not muted.

She smiled, far more relieved than she necessarily wanted to let on. "Nice try. But, I have been told I'm as adept at avoiding him as you are."

 _"I'm sure he loves that,"_ Jim remarked with a chuckle.

Diana stood and made her way over to the console at her desk. There had been a way to transfer open channels to her internal room comm. She just needed to remember how. "Have you found anything? I take it no one noticed that you were not the fellow in the brig?"

 _"I think one of the centurions working the transporter room wasn't entirely convinced, but I gave him the pompous Romulan act and that seemed to shut him up."_ As Jim spoke, his voice stopped emitting from the tiny communicator in her hand to fill the room as she figured out how to switch the channel over. Once that was done, she returned to her spot on the couch. Instead of sitting down, she simply remained standing and took hold of her sword and sharpening stone. No matter what Jim told her next, she would be glad for the slight distraction to keep herself less on edge.

"I'm surprised it took you so long to check in," She offered, hoping he'd explain the slight delay.

 _"Remind me never to be late to dinner,"_ He said sardonically before continuing on. _"I had to find an empty room. For what I know is a skeleton crew, this place always seems to have someone wandering aimlessly. If I didn't know any better, I'd say they just have Centurions going in and out of rooms all day for the sake of throwing people off. The good news is that I managed to gain access to one of the computer terminals."_

"And?" Diana arched an eyebrow as she ran her stone over the edge of her blade, watching a shower of sparks burst forth, then disappear in mid-air.

 _"I feel like you're not nearly as into this as you should be,"_ He replied, teasing.

"Not that I don't want to talk to you, but I'd prefer to not give away your cover." She said with another swipe of her stone across the blade. "Since you didn't let me go over there with you, it's not an adventure, it's torture."

 _"Look, angel, you don't need to remind me that I'd be much happier if I had you here to divinely kick ass. But, I_ _ **am**_ _a fully trained Starfleet officer, and I'm definitely still a spy. This is my wheelhouse."_

She smiled a bit, then ran the stone one more time before flipping the blade so she could sharpen the other side. "You won't think I'm such an angel if I have to pull you free from that snake's nest. I will make sure you never hear the end of it."

Jim chuckled on the other end. _"Noted."_

When she realized he had fallen silent, apparently ready to keep flirting, she instead cleared her throat. "Jim." She paused. No response. "The intel?"

 _"Right."_ He breathed, finally getting on track. _"Not much yet, but from what I can get to, this ship's been getting communication from the Federation for decades, but it ramped up dramatically when we found you. I'm trying to access the subspace relays that were used to send the communiques, see if they have a transponder signal. I don't expect the signature to match anyone in Starfleet, I don't think we're that..."_ He trailed off. _"Well, that doesn't make any sense."_

Diana quirked an eyebrow. "What doesn't?"

Jim was silent for a long moment. Too long. Whatever it was, he didn't want to say it. When he finally did, the confusion was palpable. _"Does the term She-Wolf mean anything to you? It's coming up alongside the transponder signals, but I can't get to any of the details."_

She shook her head and glanced down at the inscription on her sword for a moment. It didn't mean anything to her _now_... but in history... "The twins Romulus and Remus were nursed by a She-Wolf. Wolves were considered sacred animals for that reason."

 _"I can't tell if it's the codename for someone in Starfleet or someone here. Might be Commander Linvah, but that doesn't play right. The Romulans don't share the same mythology, so - "_

"So, you're looking for someone human, Jim." Diana said, faced with the Truth once more. The sensation was a little less gripping than before, but nevertheless, chilled her. "You need to find out what this She-Wolf has sent to them."

 _"There's more, Diana."_ He cut in. _"The subspace relays? They share the same transponder signal. I'm sending them to you now. I think we need to investigate the connection."_

Diana sheathed her sword and set it down on the coffee table. "I'll get it to Mister Scott." She could see her console light up as the data transfer on the communicator commenced. With nothing to do but wait, she couldn't help but think more help would be better than less. "Jim, Nyota would be able to determine anything regarding communications much faster than Mister Scott - "

 _"There's someone coming. I have to go."_

"Jim - "

 _"I'll call you back."_

A quick chirp on her comm system told her that he had cut the line. Unlike Federation communications, she didn't even get the benefit of a 'Kirk out' before she was left to worry again.

Sighing, she made her way over to her console to scan through what he had sent. To her, the numbers meant _nothing._ He wanted to keep all of this off the record. She wouldn't be able to send this over to Engineering, so she'd have to go herself.

Grabbing of the datapadds in her desk, she quickly transferred over the transponder signals and made her way out of her quarters. She glanced back once more at her shield and sword before the doors closed behind her. Jim was looking for answers in technology.

Diana was now certain she had to seek her answers in the great tome of humanity. Their spy knew Roman mythology and used it to their advantage.

She and Jim were being outmaneuvered by one of their own.

* * *

Unfortunately, getting to Engineering would prove more difficult than it should have been. Since the ambassador's quarters were so close to Deck 1, she had been in the turbolift no more than a few moments before the doors opened to the bridge. Someone had called the lift there.

Glancing up from her datapadd, looking serene and thoughtful, not mournful, she found herself staring at Jaylah and Nyota.

"Diana…" Nyota said her name with a mixture of sadness and confusion that was impossible to ignore.

Jaylah was simply staring at Diana as if she wasn't sure whether she would scream or just shut down.

After a moment of tense silence, she simply stepped aside and motioned for the two women to enter the turbolift with her. The datapadd felt like it burned in her hands, a stark reminder that she was lying to two of her close friends on the vessel. "I… was headed to Engineering." She offered dumbly, hoping that it sounded appropriately distracted.

For a long moment, she tried to remember those moments after Steve's death, after Ares was gone. As she stared at the great crater where the god had once stood, while all others took relief in their survival… she felt the great hole in her heart where he had once been.

Even though she knew Jim was alive and that through him Steve was alive… it was surprisingly easy to conjure the real fear and sorrow again.

The doors to the lift closed and Nyota reached out to touch the lift control. A quick glance at the console reflected that they were headed to sickbay. She furrowed her brow, sparing a look between them.

"Sickbay?" She asked softly. "Why would you…"

Jaylah turned her attention to Diana, furrowing her brow in such a way to make her facial markings even more severe. "To see James T. We thought you would be with him."

"To be honest, I didn't expect to see you out of sickbay until Bones had to pry you away. I can't believe you even answered my hail." There was an edge in Nyota's voice, one that Diana recognized all too well.

She could tell Diana was hiding something.

 _This is why I do not like subterfuge. Not like this._ It was one thing to lead a costumed double life. This… this was destroying her friends' trust for the sake of this mission.

Diana had spent time with both of them. Nyota trusted her to be honest, even regarding her fears over their relationship. It made perfect sense that for Diana to seem so composed would have been radically off-putting.

And Jaylah had heard Diana describe each member of her team at great length, all the while explaining how difficult it would be to open up to him.

As the doors to the medical deck opened, Nyota didn't move. Nor did Jaylah. It became very clear to Diana that they were waiting for her to stop them. If she tried to stop them, then it would be clear she was hiding something. If she didn't… then they would be very hurt that she could lose someone quite so callously.

Sighing, she reached over to the lift control and closed the door. "He is not _in_ Sickbay." She finally admitted. "Because he is still on the Romulan ship."

No sooner than the words left her mouth, Nyota clapped her hands together, although whether it was in anger or self-satisfaction and relief, she couldn't tell. "I _knew_ it! I knew you weren't telling us the truth!" No sooner than she finished speaking, however, Nyota leaned back against the lift and covered her mouth with her hand. The sudden realization that the captain was not dead had confirmed her suspicions, but was more of an emotional impact than the lieutenant wanted to let on. "You said he was 'gone', and… I just… knew…"

Jaylah scowled, clearly disappointed. And her anger was very easy to see. "I noticed that signals I used on Atlamid were in the comm channels. Why did you not say anything?"

Diana held her hands up, trying to placate them both. "Please, I need to get this information to Engineering. I promise we'll talk once we get there. Mister Scott can explain why we used your communicator technology."

"Scotty knows, too?" Uhura asked, annoyed. "Let me guess, Bones and Sulu know, too?"

She shook her head. "Hikaru does not. Jim wanted everyone to be as genuine when they learned of his 'death' as possible. As the three of you were the bridge crew, he felt each of you would continue to resist the Romulans without my assistance." She couldn't help but think Barry would have found her unwillingness to keep up the deception highly amusing. He was the only one worse at keeping secrets from friends than she was. "I did not wish for this, but he would not listen." The doors to the turbolift opened again, this time on Main Engineering, and she motioned for them to follow her. "But, since you clearly had suspicions, I can now tell you without having to get into a debate with him about it later."

Jaylah continued prying for more details as Diana tried to focus on reaching engineering. "That is why you did not argue when James T and the Commander went over to their ship."

"Yes. All of this has been planned so that Jim could get back aboard the warbird."

The trio strode across the bridge to the main engineering room, where Scotty was busy at his console. A quick glance at the chief engineer showed him heads down on something. Given that all of the crew of the _Enterprise_ seemed to handle waiting fairly the same, he'd probably thrown himself into a new formula or theory to test.

"Mister Scott," Diana called, holding the datapadd up as he turned to face her.

"That from the cap'n? I thought it'd take him longer…" Unfortunately, all the color drained from the poor man's face when he realized that she wasn't alone. Even if Diana had not already told them, he certainly would have been staring down two of the most passionate people on the ship. "Ah…"

"We already know, _Mister Scott_." Jaylah said, crossing her arms over her chest. The way she clipped Scotty's more formal title with no hint of playfulness indicated that she would be holding this against him for some time. "We know the captain is not dead. He was wrong to lie to us, but you were more wrong!"

"Ah, lassie, it's not that simple - " Scotty began, but Jaylah turned pointedly away from him, facing Diana instead.

"We did not come to the decision lightly, Jaylah." Diana offered, hoping to soothe the blow.

"Then how _did_ you come to it?" Nyota might have framed the words as a question, but it was definitely much more of a demand. "You just told us that not only is Jim not dead, but he and Spock apparently planned this. My fiancee is on a Romulan warbird and I want to know the name of the admiral who ordered this so I can rip his ears off."

Diana crossed her arms, not exactly hiding her guilt. This was not how she wanted to tell them. "Jim has reason to believe - and we agree with the evidence we've seen - that someone within Starfleet is working with the Romulans." She motioned to Jaylah with a nod of her head. "It's possible they're responsible for your kidnapping."

"Why? I was a _student_." Jaylah said the word as if perhaps she'd misunderstood its meaning.

"Are ye daft, lass?" Scotty stood, trying to move back into her field of vision. Sensing he was trying to get back on her good side, Jaylah turned her head, refusing to acknowledge him. "Jaylah… ye just built a deck of holograms and ye're asking why the most secretive civilization in the Alpha Quadrant might want that."

"You still haven't answered my question." Nyota said, ignoring the growing tension between the two engineers. She was squarely focused on Diana, and with good reason.

"I know." Diana pursed her lips, choosing her words carefully. "We have nothing but circumstantial evidence at this point, but there is a possibility that the spy feeding information from Starfleet Intelligence to the Romulan Tal Shiar is an admiral."

The realization that this was a completely clandestine mission, not authorized by anyone in Starfleet, did not need to be said. Nyota's face reflected her full understanding just before she turned away so she could pace the length of the room.

She glanced down at the datapadd in her hand, then back up at the communications officer who now had answers that would do nothing to soothe her worry.

Diana needed to make it right. She stepped past Jaylah and Scotty - who was still trying to apologize - and pursued Nyota as she made it to the end of the room.

"Nyota." When she seemingly ignored her, bracing her hands on a railing, Diana closed the distance between them and reached out to tentatively touch her shoulder. "Sister."

Uhura's voice was thick with worry… and tears. "We _just_ went through this over the Delphi incident." Her hands worked to squeeze the railing to steady herself. "I know that there are times when he'll make these kinds of decisions, but…" She took a deep breath, clearly trying to keep collected. "Dammit, I thought this was Khan all over again. And you… you _knew_."

"I am sorry." Diana offered, squeezing her shoulder gently. "I should have told you as soon as we ended communications, but - "

"But, you were doing what he asked." She said with a sigh, straightening up before wiping her eyes free of tears. "You know what, I should be glad he told you at all. A few years ago, he never would have trusted anyone with this."

She smiled softly. "I've been told I'm impossible to lie to."

After a long moment to steady herself, Nyota turned back to face her. "How much danger are they in?"

"Enough that I do not want them there any longer than necessary." Diana said darkly. She pursed her lips, then held out the data padd. "The vessel belongs to the Tal Shiar. Jim found evidence of a codename: She-Wolf. In Roman mythology, a She-Wolf raised Romulus and Remus. I believe this individual sees themselves as fostering the Empire, raising them to greatness even though he or she is not of their race."

Uhura's ability to compartmentalize was always breathtaking. In moments, she had been able to set aside her deep concern for her lover and her best friend so that she could focus on helping them. She took the datapadd and scanned the information. "These are… transponder signals. Starfleet uses them to identify communiques and point them to a particular set of subspace relays for transmission."

"Do you think we can use those signals to determine who the She-Wolf is?"

Uhura fell silent for a moment, flipping through the data before she finally offered. "I can certainly tell you what relays they're using. From there… we'll see." She paused. She must have seen the concern on Diana's face. "Does Jim have a suspect?"

Sighing, Diana spoke, even though the words did not ring true. "He thinks it's Conner Kent."

Uhura clearly didn't believe it, either. "He was a founder of Starfleet. I can't believe he would ever do that. How could Jim? Didn't he meet Superman?"

A slight smile tugged at Diana's lips in response. Nyota had spent just as much time examining Kent's career after they'd met him formally as Diana had. "He did. And I don't believe Kal or Conner would ever do such a thing. But, Jim doesn't know them as I do, and he did vote to demote him. There _is_ something wrong."

Nyota shook her head. "I don't know… let's hope Jim finds something more."

Diana nodded in agreement, but before she could say more, her communicator chirped in her pocket. She pulled it free and flipped it open. "Ambassador Prince here."

" _It's McCoy. Darlin', tell me Jim's contacted you."_

Diana glanced down at the data padd in Nyota's hand, noting the time. "He did about a half hour ago. He doesn't need to check back in for another thirty minutes."

" _Then we got a problem. He just tried to hail me on that communicator thing Scotty gave me and it went dead mid-sentence."_

Diana paused, instantly knowing that what Bones had said was true. Her intuition didn't seem to be driven by her godly abilities, but rather the profound sense that Jim was in danger. Very present danger. "I'm on my way to the bridge. We need to tell Lieutenant Sulu. Prince out." Diana clapped her communicator shut.

As she did so, the lights suddenly changed in engineering to a more amber hue. Sulu's voice echoed in the cavernous great room.

" _All hands to your stations. Yellow alert!_ "


	49. To Save Today: Act III

**To Save Today: Act III**

 _ **Author's Note:** H_ _ey, guys! So, I apologize but I am going to be out of town all of Christmas week, so I've been able to keep writing, but have had no time to reply back to everyone's reviews. But, please know that I read them and appreciate them! And I'm so excited for the rest of this episode for you!_

* * *

In the time that it took for the rest of the staff to reach the bridge, the lights had gone from amber to red. Since so many of the stations were manned by crewmen that Diana didn't know as well, she didn't feel like she needed to remain at her customary place.

Especially when she caught sight of what - or rather who - was on the viewport.

Captain Kirk, still looking quite Romulan but clearly bleeding quite red from a split lip, was in custody by two more centurions. To his credit, he seemed quite cool and calm. Judging from the way he watched Diana walk closer, he had a number of things he wanted to say. Yet, he didn't seem scared. _He knows something. He found something important before they caught him._

From the fact that the alert status had changed while they were en route, Diana could gather that Sulu had probably been stalling. At the very least, he had been honest in his belief that they had killed the captain. As Diana stepped down onto the main level of the bridge to stand beside Lieutenant Sulu in the captain's chair, she caught the honest shock on his expression.

And that was why Jim had insisted that some of the crew not know. Sulu's relief was palpable and genuine, even as he was forced to take command.

" _I commend you, Lieutenant Sulu."_ Commander Linvah said. _"Either you truly did not realize your captain's deception, or you are a very talented liar. Worthy of a Romulan."_

"I can assure you, Commander, I'm just as confused as you are." Sulu finally replied. When Diana spared a glance back over at him again, she found that his emotions were carefully masked once more. She had never seen him at the captain's chair, but he was clearly suited for it. "Seeing as how our captain was supposedly killed on your ship, but now appears to be very much alive, I'm a little concerned _you_ might be responsible."

Linvah's expression probably matched Diana's: honest surprise. Hikaru was suggesting that the Romulans were attempting to do the very deception that she knew they were perpetuating.

" _That is quite the accusation. But, ridiculous."_ Linvah remarked as she pulled a disruptor pistol from her belt. _"Let me make this explicitly clear: Your captain and first officer have attempted to access sensitive information that is property of the Romulan Star Empire. You_ _ **will**_ _be brought to Romulus. You_ _ **will**_ _be interrogated, and you_ _ **will**_ _regret this attempt to breach our border. But, first… you will be boarded."_

"We will do no such thing." Sulu replied without hesitation. "In fact, if you do not return the captain and Commander Spock, we will destroy this vessel and take you with us."

" _Foolish and futile."_ Linvah replied. She raised her disruptor pistol and Diana felt her heart clench as she leveled it at Jim. The only way to get from one ship to the other would be the transporters, and she couldn't be there in the blink of an eye…

"Lieutenant Sulu, I recommend that we cooperate." The words were out of Diana's mouth before she could stop them.

Linvah's aim lowered, clearly curious at the turn of events. _"You are a Federation Ambassador."_ Diana vaguely remembered that her Federation patch was quite visible on her jacket. _"You would have been better to stay silent. The Romulan Security Council will most certainly see your presence here as an act of war."_

"As my goal is only to keep peace and to ensure the safety of the Federation, I would like to prevent further misunderstanding." Diana continued, steeling herself. She had negotiated trade, she could dance around in the exhausting waltz of diplomacy, but this was something different. She saw a tactical advantage. She only needed to press it.

" _The ambassador is quite smart, Commander,"_ Jim said coolly from her side. _"And I'd wager she doesn't have an Achilles' heel like some other ambassadors, so if she's opening the gates, you should take it as an offering. Of peace."_

Diana's eyebrow arched. There were keywords in what he had said, and there was an edge of mischief in the tone. Linvah didn't know him well enough, and how could she? But, Diana did. And she knew. Instantly, the plan began to come into focus. "As you can see, Commander, we will cooperate."

Sulu turned to her, opening his mouth to protest, but she simply shook her head at him.

" _Very well. Lower your shields. Now."_

Diana smiled. "I will meet your men myself in just a moment. Lieutenant, please have Chief Scott meet me in transporter room 1."

Sulu immediately stood and motioned to Uhura at her station.

"I've muted audio." The comms officer said without hesitation. It was as if she had been waiting for the opportunity.

"What are you doing?" Sulu asked, honestly shocked. "First, you don't seem shocked the captain's alive and now you're inviting the Romulans aboard?"

"Jim is trying to warn us. He knows that if we allow a boarding party, the Romulans won't attack us outright. They'd expect it. But, they _will_ find a way to kill us before we reach their homeworld." Diana replied, motioning back to the viewscreen. She tried to keep her body language neutral enough to suggest that they were discussing logistics. "The boarding party isn't what we should be focusing on. Jim mentioned Achilles, opening the gates… as in the fall of Troy." Diana's heart began to pound, though more with adrenaline than fear. "The Trojans fell because they thought they had already won. Just like the Romulans do."

Sulu frowned. "Then we need a strike team."

"No." Diana said with a bit of a smile. "You just need me."

* * *

After describing her plan - such as it was - to Sulu and Jaylah, Diana made a brief stop at her quarters long enough to pick up her sword and shield. She also shed her federation garb before she reached transporter room one. As she came through the doors, Jaylah and Scotty were busy at the transporter console, arguing with each other.

"Och, lassie, get out of the way, I know what I'm doin' - "

"You did not build these traps, _I_ did!" Jaylah snapped, motioning off to Diana's left. A quick look in that direction revealed several of the holo-emitters that Jaylah had designed. No sooner than Jaylah finished scolding Scotty, the engineer inevitably tapped a button and the emitter spat plasma sparks in defiance.

Diana turned to look at the chief engineer. "I suggest you let Jaylah take care of the barricades, Mister Scott." She strode over to the two of them, pausing at the glass barrier and console before the transporter pad.

"My traps will make them think there are no doors. It _will_ work," Jaylah said pointedly as she continued to work. "Promise me you will tell James T. I do not like it when he lies."

Diana smiled in spite of the dire circumstances. She told herself that if something had happened since ending the communication with the Romulans, she would have known. Jim had to be fine. "I will be sure to remind him that I told him so." She caught sight of Jaylah's pipe staff, a formidable weapon that the ensign had left in storage on the _Yorktown_ after the Altamid incident. "Just be sure to disable the boarding party as quickly as you can."

Jaylah nodded, then went back to work, shoulders taut and with a stony expression. She was still upset, and that wouldn't change until they were out of danger.

Nevertheless, Diana leaned a bit closer as Jaylah bent down to work on one of the emitters. "It was not Mister Scott's idea to keep this from you. Try not to hold it against him."

Jaylah glanced up at her, her facial markings turning a hair more blue than they normally were. Diana had learned in the last week that she was blushing, slightly embarrassed. She hoped it meant that the woman would let the grudge go.

After a moment, Diana turned her attention back to the chief engineer. "Can you make it work? Can you get me onto the Romulan ship?"

Scotty gave one last look at Jaylah, a bit more longing than he probably meant to and quite guilty, before turning to face the Amazon. "Aye. I can, but it's gonna be tough."

"How so?"

Scotty reached up and dropped the small HUD lens in front of his eye as he brought up a series of calculations on the console. "I'll have to piggyback your transporter signal off of the Romulans' incoming signal. Your pattern could get lost if I'm even a microsecond off, but if ye want on the ship, that's the only way I can guarantee it. It also means that ye need to be on the transporter pad the exact moment that they beam over." He paused, then added as an afterthought, "Which should be any moment."

"Then I better be ready." Diana said, making her way over to the transporter pad and pulling her sword and shield.

"Are… are ye sure ye don't want a phaser rifle?" He asked hesitantly. Diana's reaction to Scotty's suggestion was unimpressed and the engineer quickly dropped it. "Right."

" _Bridge to Transporter Room 1. How's it going down there?"_ Hikaru's voice filled the room with his calm and collected sense of authority. If he had any particular opinions regarding Jim's subterfuge, he had kept them to himself and remained professional. She found herself wondering how much longer Sulu would remain on the _Enterprise_ past the remainder of their five year mission. She had a feeling that the more he got the taste of command, he would continue to be tempted by it.

She only hoped he would escape the pitfalls that she had once fallen into.

 _You send people to die, you tell them that the cause you want them to fight is worthy of their life. There is no choice more difficult…_

Diana pushed the thought away, focusing on the mission at hand. "Diana here. We are ready to receive our 'guests' when you are. Jaylah has configured a holographic barrier that should thoroughly confuse them."

" _Glad to hear it. Once you're aboard the ship, I'll send out a distress call to any Federation vessel in range. With any luck, someone will be on the other side of the Neutral Zone barrier and come to help."_

Diana scoffed a bit, twirling her sword in her hand as she warmed up her joints. "With any luck, they'll only have to help with cleaning up."

If the commanding officer had anything else he wanted to say, the opportunity left him as Scotty suddenly sat up a bit straighter at the station.

"Sorry to cut this short, Mister Sulu," Scotty interrupted. "But, looks like the transporters are active on the warbird. They're prepping for transport."

" _Then I'll let you focus. Please don't splatter the ambassador on the hull of that ship. Sulu out."_

Diana blinked at the less than stellar endorsement, then exchanged a glance with Scotty. "I won't splatter." She said, trying to provide him a boost of confidence without giving away that it was almost a plea on her part. "I won't."

Scotty's mouth worked for a long moment before he shrugged and said, "No. Course not."

She nodded once to him, then turned her attention to Jaylah. The ensign stood and pressed a button on her datapadd.

"Signal incoming," Scotty intoned, solely focused on the console in front of him now. "Prepare for transport in 3…"

Jaylah nodded to Diana as the holographic barrier flickered to life. The door disappeared into bulkhead.

"2…"

Diana braced herself, lowering to her knees as she held her sword at the ready and pulled her shield.

"Initiating transport, _now_."

The transporter room de-materialized.

* * *

The Romulan warbird's bulkheads came into view around her as the transporter's shimmer finally disappeared. Unlike the _Enterprise,_ built in white, bright panes and transparent aluminum, the Romulan warbird was gray and dull. Instead of bright lights and sparkling consoles, the transporter room was bathed in sickly green and lavender lighting.

The hints of Klingon Imperial sigils all but buffed out of the bulkhead plating reminded her that this was purchased technology, not earned. The Romulans cared so little for that which they purchased. How much did they care about that which they stole?

She would have to find out once she located Jim. For now, she had another, more pressing issue.

The Romulan centurion at the console before her was staring at her in utter shock. Scotty's plan had worked: They'd had no idea that she was coming until she had arrived. He shouted in Romulan, although Diana didn't quite understand it, but she could understand the universal language of violence. He would see her dead.

He pulled his disruptor pistol and immediately fired on her. Diana's shield went up, deflecting the volley of fire before she slung it back at him and knocked him off of his feet.

Jim had been right to suggest this plan. The presence of a second boarding party off to her left suggested that they would have continued to board the _Enterprise_ once they had access to it. They all pulled their disruptor pistols as well, moving to fire on her. In the space between heartbeats, she moved from her crouching position to deflect the disruptor fire with her bracelets. She managed to ricochet a few bolts back, taking out one of the centurions, but it wasn't enough.

She grunted as one of the bolts hit her right bicep, just below her arm band. It had been sheer luck on the part of the centurion. Her flesh sizzled under the high pressure and heat, but she barely even flinched. Instead, she used their moment of shock and confusion to push off of the ground and charge them. Her sword moved with purpose, cutting down the centurions where they stood.

She rose quickly, kicking one of the centurions into a console on instinct. As the plasma sparks showered over him, she turned to face the rest of them, only to realize she had struck them down in the melee already.

Chest heaving, she took a moment to look at her feet. If they had not fired on her, perhaps she could have subdued them.

The lighting changed around her and a klaxon began to sound.

Diana's sorrow over the loss of life in battle would have to wait. The Romulans knew she was aboard, and they would most assuredly make an attempt to destroy the _Enterprise_ , kill her, or both.

Reinforcements would be in the transporter room shortly.

Diana quickly made her way back over to the console. She stomped on the rim of her shield from where it sat, kicking it up into her hand so she could have it at the ready. As she did so, she unfurled her lasso and pulled the dazed centurion up enough so that the lasso would wind around his arms.

"Tell me where they're keeping the Federation prisoners." She said, watching the Lasso of Hestia shine brilliantly in her hands.

The centurion's eyes came back into focus as he found her face. He opened his mouth, compelled by the lasso, then clamped it shut. She had seen that look many times before: confusion that the truth he so desperately sought to hide would spill from his lips no matter what he did.

"It is pointless to resist, and very painful." She coaxed, tightening her grip on the rope.

The centurion groaned, then finally answered. The communicator tucked into her armor had finally had a moment to hear the Romulan language and now instantaneously translated it for her. "The Vulcan…. Is in the commander's quarters… human… in the medical bay."

Diana's eyebrows rose in surprise. "Why the medical bay?"

"The Sub-Commander… will extract the truth from him."

They were going to torture Jim.

The answer was hardly satisfying, but it was all she needed. She held the lasso tighter, willing for his mind to open enough to share the location of the medical bay. Once she could picture the route in her mind, she knocked him out with a quick hit from her palm.

She had no time to lose, nor did the Romulans have any mercy left from her.

The lasso slipped back onto her hook and she turned her attention to the transporter room doors.

She began to make her way towards them, but they opened sooner than she expected.

Another five Romulans entered, disruptor rifles already firing. Green bolts flew through the air towards her. Shield at the ready, she strafed the room back towards the transporter pad. Unlike before, she didn't use a burst of speed from her godly abilities. She would need that advantage later.

She braced herself, taking another volley of disruptor fire before she made her move. She spun, lobbing her shield again with such force that one of the centurions was knocked clear through his companions and dented the bulkhead in the corridor. She moved to strike one of the others, but caught another disruptor bolt in the side.

Four left.

 _Never let your guard down…_

Antiope's words thrummed through her veins as she whirled her sword and cut down a centurion. Her blade could rip apart Apokoliptian steel, it could easily cut through flesh. She turned her head as green blood splattered across her cheek and shoulder. With her momentum, she forced him off of her blade as he sank to the ground.

Three left.

As another centurion came at her, she pivoted and sliced her sword through his disruptor rifle. She had done so with countless weapons in the past, but never something from this century.

Something told her that she should have expected the resulting flash of plasma sparks as the fuel rods dislodged and went scattering to the ground. The centurion backpedaled just in time for her foot to connect with his chest.

Two left.

Diana whirled, her sword hand slick with blood. Unfortunately, the remaining two centurions were on either side of her. She couldn't attack one without the other one taking an opportunity.

She heard a disruptor whine as it prepared to fire and turned. In the blink of an eye, Diana knocked the disruptor away just a mere inch to the right, the bolt firing close enough to her cheek that she could feel its heat and hear the sizzle as strands of her hair were fried in the process.

But, that gave her enough time to flip the sword in her grip and thrust back, lodging her weapon in the approaching centurion behind her. Before the stunned soldier before her could react, she pulled her sword free and slashed him across the front as well.

Silence finally fell over the room again. She reached for her communicator in her belt, pulling it open as she started on her way down the corridors. "Prince to the _Enterprise._ "

" _Diana, good to hear your voice._ " Nyota's voice was fraught with tension, but seemed slightly more relieved knowing Diana had made it.

"The warbird's gone to red alert here," Diana said as she wiped her sword off on the centurion stuck in the bulkhead and grabbed her shield. She took a long moment to check the man's pulse, but found none. She sighed, stomach swirling with the mixture of sorrow and frustration that accompanied such a battle. "Have they attacked you?"

" _Not yet. I think it helps that Jaylah and Scotty took out the boarding party. We did notice that they powered weapons, and we have shields back up. I think Sulu's playing a game of chicken."_

Well, at least that was a relief. She had a feeling that was a temporary truce, however. "They've taken Jim to the medical bay. They mean to torture him. Spock, I believe, is safe. But, I will contact you when I have them both. Be careful."

" _You, too, Diana. Enterprise out."_

Satisfied that, for now, the ship was safe, she turned her attention back to the corridor. The centurions had very specific patrol routes, guessing from her brief glimpse in the mind of the transporter chief. Getting to the medical bay would be straightforward, but there was no way she wouldn't run into several more centurions.

"I hope you meant what you said about this being a skeleton crew, Jim." Diana mused aloud before she started to march down the corridor. "If not, they certainly will be when I am done with them."

* * *

Diana was met with very minimal resistance getting to the medical deck. Unfortunately, once she reached the deck where Jim was being held, it was very clear that they knew the value of their prisoner. And they must have been aware that Diana was on board.

The red alert continued, the lights strobing across the corridors, casting an eerie filter over everything and everyone she saw. The gray bulkhead looked burgundy, giving Diana the unfortunate impression that she was walking down into Tartarus, not a spaceship. It seemed fitting, somehow appropriate. She was nothing less than one of the Furies, intent on pricking out the eyes of all who defied the goddess of Truth.

Now that she had taken down so many of their number, she had no doubt in her mind that if she planned on rescuing Jim, it would be quick… and it would be bloody.

But, these were not parademons or Furies or even Medusa. The Romulans were soldiers, being manipulated for a cause. How much blood would be on her hands before she found him? Would it even be worth it?

It was easy to justify, to tell herself that Jim had found something vital to the welfare of the Federation. But, until she saw it herself, it was all smoke and mirrors.

 _What if I promise to be careful?  
_

 _Fighting does not make you a hero. Which is why tonight I will tell you a new story. A story of our people and my days of battle. So you will finally understand why war is nothing to hope for._

Her mother's voice brought her to a halt in the corridor.

Her mother had led her Amazons into war against many forces, and they never hesitated when their lives were at stake. Her sisters had died defending Steve. _One_ innocent man was worth the lives of ten with weapons. That was the only way her mother and Antiope kept the demons at bay.

Such was battle. There was a right side and a wrong side. Diana had never been known for straddling such a fence. But, she never _hoped_ for war.

She glanced around, recognized her location and picked up the pace. She wasn't far from the medical bay now. She had avoided a few patrols, but given how heavily fortified this deck was, if she began a fight, she would probably end up fighting every single centurion on the deck by the time it was over.

Diana took a step forward down the hall, spotting the medical bay ahead.

She was suddenly knocked back with a jolt of electricity and felt as if she had stepped into a wall.

Confused, she reached a hand up as she stepped forward again, only to be stopped by a shimmering field. A _force_ field. The Romulans had fortified Jim's position more than she had expected.

"Damn." She breathed, turning to head back the other way. As she did so, a number of centurions came around the corner, weapons ready.

They had not just fortified his position: They had used it to track hers.

"This will only end one way…" Diana warned, holding her hands up. She had not drawn her weapons yet.

One of them rose his weapon, training it on her.

Diana frowned, gently drifting her hand higher until she could reach her sword. "This is your second warning. I do not wish to hurt you any more than is necessary, but you are torturing an innocent man - "

The centurions all rose their weapons in response and her hand paused in its climb upward. They were threatened by her. But, did they deserve death?

 _You keep doubting yourself._ Antiopechided her in her memory. Her aunt, the great General, had never hesitated in the movement of her blade. When one was attacked, one answered in kind. Her hand moved a bit higher.

"Last warning. Do not fire on me, or I will make sure you never harm another person again."

The lead centurion fired his weapon.

Diana hand dropped just enough so that she could block it with her bracelet. Her other hand gripped her sword. The die had been cast. As the Furies pursued Orestes, Diana would as well.

"Very well. Make this difficult," She said, challenging them to open fire.

They certainly did.

While her wounds had healed, there would be more.

Even as she tried to grab her shield, she realized that this would not be such an easy fight. She would have to pick and choose her wounds, because she certainly could not escape unscathed.

Diana's sword moved with ease. As she knocked a rifle out of one hand and pivoted to stab another centurion, she could feel her mind drop into the simple mantras that she had learned since childhood.

 _Never let your guard down!_

Antiope intoned once more. Diana found her instincts stepping into overdrive as she began to cut through a swath of soldiers. It was sloppy, it was messy.

It was brutal.

 _Don't hold back, Diana_. She could hear Kal goading her on, as if they were back on the training grounds of Themyscira.

Diana's sword moved with bone-crunching force. One of the Romulans screamed as she relieved him of his arm, the sound far away in the fog of battle. She did not want to hurt them, but she had warned them. And yet, they kept coming, each more fierce than the last. None of them would retreat. None of them would simply see the senselessness in the violence.

 _You expect the battle to be fair!_

Antiope's words snapped her back to the present, to the heart-stopping primal fear that even Diana faced in battle.

She stabbed another one, but by now her sword was so slick with blood that she lost her grip for a moment. She dropped to her knee and grabbed one of the Romulans, disarming him with a crack of bone. She threw him into his companions and pivoted. She rolled, grabbing her sword from the dead centurion and pulling her shield finally. Her arms were smattered with disruptor wounds against her normally pristine flesh.

She did not want to have to kill them all. If only they would stop...

 _The battle will never be fair! Never!_

Antiope did not teach her to kill because anyone wanted to.

She taught her to win the battle because she _had to._

A scream ripped through the battle haze, echoing from down the corridor. It was not a centurion.

Her heart stopped from the sound. She pivoted, turning to look in its direction. It was coming from the medical bay, full of agony.

It was _Jim_.

Diana rose her shield as the last few centurions fired on her again, then charged.

 _You are stronger than you believe._

 _And I believe in love._

Lightning sparked around her, lacing around her fingers and her wrists as she kept her mind on _who_ \- and _what -_ she was fighting for. She struck them down with godly speed, the divine lightning of Zeus running through her veins, knocking them unconscious and arcing off to the corridors past.

Sparks showered around them all as the lightning shorted out the red alert klaxons on the deck and burnt out consoles in the walls.

Another scream, more broken than the last, echoed down the hall.

Diana turned, bracelets and diadem glowing with the might of the gods.

No force field would stop her.

Diana rushed forward, bracelets clashing together in an explosion of her power around her like a shield. She connected with the force field, using all her strength to force her way through it.

 _You have greater power than you know._ Antiope's words filled her senses, pushing her forward. _Harder! Again!_

On the other side of the force field, two more centurions had come out of the medical bay to see the commotion. They watched as Diana screamed in righteous fury, forcing one step closer, then another.

The power couplings that supported the force field began to whine in distress.

She forced another step.

The bulkhead erupted in sparks as the couplings failed and the field disappeared.

Stumbling forward, Diana caught herself and slowly stood straight.

Her hands were balled into fists, her armor conducting the lightning of the gods around her.

Diana had never felt such power. Not even when she fought Ares and channeled the lightning, not in her many years alongside other members of the Justice League, even when fighting Darkseid. It was as if a door within her had opened, freeing something.

 _Welcome to your birthright, Sister._

The voice was so sudden, so familiar and yet foreign, she blinked out of the power-induced haze.

"Athena?" Diana whispered. Her lips even felt the charge of static.

She shivered, not entirely sure what rush had just gone through her. Whatever it was, it was gone now. She glanced down at her hands, then back up at the centurions who had been watching her.

They lost their nerve. The two of them dropped their weapons and ran off.

Diana made her way to the medical bay. It was only then that she realized her ankle was throbbing and she was limping. She could snap the ankle back into place later.

First, she needed to get to Jim.

The doors to the medical bay blew open as she sped into the room. The torturer – who seemed to think he was the doctor based on the implement in his hand – turned to face her. Jim was trapped to a biobed, clearly conscious but in pain.

Without hesitation, Diana took her lasso and grabbed hold of the doctor. She yanked him to her, then held him tightly. "Why would you do this to him?!" She demanded.

"Because I like to hear them scream." The Romulan replied without hesitation. The lasso opened the truth to her, flooding her mind with the images of countless victims… of experiments, his own countrymen and women… "And I will continue to do so once your Federation frees me from custody."

Diana took a step back, looking at him for a long moment. She remembered several men that had done so, defying the law, exploiting weaknesses. She had never let them do so again.

"No." She simply replied. "You won't."

Diana reached out and snapped his neck. The lasso grew dim and she coiled it back around the hook before turning to look at Jim.

"Diana… what did you do?" He asked, looking her over.

She remembered Antiope's words, her own mother's warnings about the horrors of war.

"I won the battle."


	50. To Save Today: Act IV

**To Save Today: Act IV**

 _ **Author's Note:**_ _As before, Age of Wonder will experience a network preemption for the holiday, as i will be travelling across the country and completely not available to post! Plus, I imagine a lot of you will be travelling for the holidays, too, and seeing family/friends/MOVIES! When I come back on January 3rd, I will begin the New Year with the STUNNING, ACTION-PACKED, TWO-PART CONCLUSION OF AGE OF WONDER!_

 _Again, thank you so much to everyone who's been going on this journey with me! I promised angst with a happy ending, and you will get that happy ending!_

* * *

The warbird's sickbay thrummed around her, an uneasy cadence that did nothing to shake the images of death and torture from Diana's mind. She hoped to find comfort in Jim's eyes, in his safety… it seemed to come at a price.

Diana had seen the look on Jim's face before. Not on his, but on many members of her team over the years. Kal, Barry, and Bruce…

In battles against demons and mythical creatures, they let her work uninhibited. But, when they saw their enemy as too close to human, she and Arthur had taken actions the others would not. They were both warriors, yet Arthur never faced half as much scrutiny as Diana had for her actions. She knew, as well-meaning as it was, it was a misconception from the rest of the League that because the Amazons strove for peace that they did not understand the price of that goal. To put it politely: she was not afraid to kill. She had argued with Bruce on the subject many times. The Joker's horrors upon Gotham took far more lives than Diana would have ever permitted.

As Jim's eyes scanned the corpse of his own torturer, she was poignantly reminded that no matter the time, Men did not understand the heart of the Amazon. No matter how many times and ways she tried to explain, the emotions were still the same.

Confusion, relief, shock… and an element of dismay. Jim had seen her slay enemies in battle before. She had a feeling it was more the state of her apparel and the fact that she had killed the "doctor" for the sins Jim couldn't see just as much as the ones he knew that bothered him.

She had to believe he would understand. She knew Steve did. In fact, he had understood _too_ well.

Diana crossed over to him, snapping apart the wrist and chest restraints that kept him bound to the biobed. The monitors began to whine. With ease, she smashed her hand through the small display until the incessant squealing ceased.

Once free, she slipped her hands under his back to help him sit up, then to his feet. He had torn his gaze away from the body on the floor and instead looked to her. Given the way his eyes didn't want to focus, she had a feeling he was suffering from a concussion.

"We need to get you out of here," She muttered, bringing a hand up to touch his cheek. She only hesitated when she realized she was filthy. "What have they done to you?" She breathed as she tried to help him out of the bed.

"I've had worse," He groaned, almost dismissive.

No sooner than she got him to his feet, he actually swooned towards her, and she held him fast. That was when she noticed that his ears were covered in blood. It took her a moment to recognize that the Tal Shiar had been surgically removing the modifications McCoy had made to him, piece by piece.

There was a sizeable stab wound in his shoulder as well from a surgical blade, now discarded on the floor.

He didn't seem to care. Instead, he took hold of her wrist and pulled her close, expression severe. "Diana." He ground out. "Don't make me ask you again. What the hell did you do?"

"Exactly what you asked me to. I was the Trojan horse." She replied, frowning a bit that he seemed to be less than understanding.

"I know I asked for a rescue, but you're covered in blood." He said, as if that should explain all of it. "And not just theirs. Your arms…"

Diana scanned his face, recognizing the change in his emotions. He wasn't dismayed, he was worried. He was looking at her as if he'd somehow asked for her to unleash something he didn't have a right to.

"They were going to kill the crew before we got to Romulus." She finally replied, reaching up to brush a strand of hair out of his face. "Jim, I did what I had to. They would have tortured you, maybe Spock. I returned the violence they delivered back to me." She caught his eyes, forcing him to acknowledge what she was saying. "I spared the ones that put down their arms. I'm not an animal, but I will not sacrifice even one of our crew to them."

Jim's eyes slowly widened as he processed her meaning and relaxed a bit. He released her wrist, only for his hands to brush down her arms. It was clear he wanted to wipe the charred bits of black off of her, but didn't know where to start. "I get that. I've had to put down people before. I just didn't expect you to take on the whole ship."

"I haven't. Just the ones that got in my way to you." She reminded him. "And that number will grow if we do not get to Spock and get off this ship. Sulu's issued a distress call in the hopes that a ship near the Zone will be able to help us get back across the border."

Jim pursed his lips, then slowly moved to steady himself again from another wave of nausea. When she offered silently to help him, he politely declined with a curt shake of his head. "Guess Kent was right. I don't have to worry about my career after pulling another stunt like this."

"That only depends on what you learned." Diana said, reaching down to take his hand in hers without thinking. "I could tell you found something the moment you looked at me on the bridge."

He nodded, reaching over to brush some of the grit off of her arm. "I did. But, you're not gonna like it."

Diana looked at him questioningly, but was only answered with him pulling her towards the dimly lit medical office. Once they were inside, he shut and locked the door behind them.

"The whole reason I got caught was because I was in here…" Jim was searching the room as he spoke, his hands feeling along the console. She recognized the gesture from one she'd done countless times. He was searching for something hidden along the edges. "The transponder signals we keep seeing everywhere? Definitely our spy. Spock was going to pull as many records as he could get that went directly to Commander Linvah, but the Sub-Commander, Tal, the guy you… dispatched... " Jim paused in his movements as he searched further back and under the console. Grunting slightly, he struggled for a moment before they both heard the resounding click of an old switch. "He was also getting data."

"Data?" She helped him back to his feet in spite of his protests. "Not communiques?"

Jim nodded, then motioned to the console as it went dead, then lit back up as if being booted to a completely different operating system. "I'd just found the switch before they spotted me and dragged me to the bridge for the dog and pony show. But, looks like they've been getting sent a series of surveillance files. And I'm starting to wonder if She-Wolf isn't the spy, but the project..."

Diana's eyebrow arched as Jim bent over the console a bit to activate a series of files. "What kind of project?" She had hoped that the She-Wolf was perhaps a reference to a female spy. Until Uhura could confirm the transponder signals, Conner was still the foremost suspect on Jim's mind.

JIm glanced over at Diana, clearly hesitant. He looked as if he was still debating telling her whatever was on his mind, but after a long moment, he finally nodded and turned back to the console. He had apparently made the decision not to repeat past mistakes. "The kind you're really not going to like."

The surveillance footage had been badly damaged. Whether that was from the technology they were using to view, or if it was more because of the degradation in long-range communications, she had no way of knowing.

But, she recognized what they were seeing. Rather… who.

And Diana's heart immediately clenched.

"Vanessa…" She breathed.

She was strapped to a biobed, just as Jim had been only moments ago, but she seemed to be sedated. The camera that had recorded the images must have been in the upper corner of the ceiling, casting down to the unwilling actors for the play below.

" _Status, Doctor."_ The voice that filtered over was instantly recognizable. She'd been trying to reach him for weeks. Admiral Hackett stepped into view, watching as another Starfleet officer - the doctor in question - leaned forward to check Vanessa's pupils. The doctor seemed familiar somehow, although Diana knew it had to be coincidence. She couldn't have known the woman.

" _She's remained sedated, but we can't remove the implants. Every time we try, the programming reasserts itself. Borg nanotechnology is quite insidious. The nanoprobes have adapted to the serum. We can't reach the patient's psyche."_ Diana swallowed down a sudden lump in her throat. The timestamp in the upper right corner of the screen indicated that they had been en route to Delphi. Perhaps that was why he had gone silent. If they couldn't determine how to wake Vanessa...

" _Keep trying."_ Hackett said, watching the woman as she slept. _"Did Watchtower's records help at all?"_

" _There are no surviving records regarding this … anti-Life equation, but the anecdotal evidence suggests that the Borg are the natural progression of such an equation."_ The doctor continued on, dauntless. _"There's more of her that's Borg than Amazon, you realize. I may not ever be able to save her. We lack the kind of technology that created Cyborg. What you're asking for is a lot more work than - "_

" _I promised someone we'd protect her."_ Hackett remarked. _"But, that's only if there's anything of her left in there. Find a way to get past the code, Doctor."_

" _Understood, Admiral."_

The file stopped playing.

"They knew about the Borg because they knew about Darkseid, about the League…" Jim said softly, filling in the blanks for her. "That's why Hackett was waiting for us on the _Yorktown._ They must have been tipped off the moment I made my first log entry."

"He promised he'd protect her." She said.

"And I think he was." Jim leaned forward to pull another one up, queuing it for playback.

"Was?" Diana barely breathed before he motioned for her to watch.

The timestamp was a few days later. Vanessa was still strapped to the bed, sedated. The doctor was in the process of examining the Borg technology fashioned into a replacement arm.

Diana's heart sank, and she reached out beside her to brush her fingers against Jim's hand. As if he knew she needed the brief support, he took her hand and held it tight as the doctor kept working.

" _Doctor._ " The voice was distorted, too modified for Diana to tell the gender or even species. It wasn't one she recognized. _"Progress report."_

" _Progress is steady, Admiral. The samples we acquired from the organic storehouses at the Millennium Gate facility were quite satisfactory."_ As the doctor spoke, Diana furrowed her brow as she recognized the location.

"The Millennium Gate, that's where Kal settled the Kandorians after we restored the city…" While meant to be a civic environment that was self-sustaining and the height of technology, the facility had secrets acquired by Kryptonians and the League. "A.R.G.U.S. stored a number of things there, including technology not for human hands."

" _The sample has integrated with the host technology perfectly. The nanoprobes are now completely integrated with the organic tissue.. I don't want to get too technical, but with the Starro's invasive genetic structure has allowed for 80% of the Amazon's bio-mass to be converted or assimilated by the Borg nanoprobes."_

"Starro?" Diana blurted out, her heart jumping to her throat. Without thinking, she pulled her hand free from Jim's. She didn't want to be touched, she had to _think_ , and there was no time.

The doctor looked up towards something out of the camera's view, but it was the first time Diana had a good look at the face. _"She's remarkably resilient,"_ The woman finished, almost surprisingly gleeful.

"By the gods…" She breathed, leaning forward. "She looks so much like her…"

" _Glad to hear it, Doctor Anderson. Your family's service to Starfleet has always been appreciated."_

The doctor nodded, then reached up to toy with something on her ear that Diana had not been able to see before in the prior file.

And then Diana _knew_.

The file stopped playback. Diana's hands clutched at the edges of the console so hard she heard the metal strain and then finally dent. Her heart pounded in her ears, blood rushing through her senses as she tried to ignore the impending feeling of panic.

"Woah, hey…" Jim reached up to take her wrists gently. "Diana, don't break the evidence."

"Leslie Anderson…" Diana breathed, shaking her head. "No, no, I watched her die. I saw her plummet to her death. How could she still be alive?"

Jim tried to pull her hands away, but she held fast. It wasn't until he shifted so she had to look him in the eye that he spoke again. "Diana, that woman on the screen can't be the same woman you knew centuries ago."

Diana's eyes widened as she realized that, of course, Jim wouldn't know. "No, no, of course she's not…" Slowly, she released her grip on the console. "Leslie Anderson died. But, she… she was a cybernetics expert, credited with giving herself the ability to walk again. The papers called her Doctor Cyber for her advances in the 2020s. But, what she didn't tell anyone was that she didn't learn to walk again… she learned how to walk into other people's _minds_. The device on that woman's ear? That _is_ Leslie. She's a consciousness trapped in a computer, and someone in Starfleet has been letting her experiment on Vanessa! With a _Starro!_ " She cried, genuinely dismayed and quickly threatening to bubble over with rage. There were no words, no time, nothing to be done except to fume and worry.

"What is a Starro, anyway?" Jim asked, clearly hoping he could distract her.

Diana opened her mouth to reply, then paused as she noticed another video. "There's more…"

She reached over to turn on the last video, ignoring Jim's: "What about Starro?"

The timestamp jumped significantly, just days before she had tried to reach Hackett before they went after Jaylah. And yet, there was the admiral, standing watch over Vanessa again.

Only she didn't look nearly as much like Vanessa as she had before. The Borg implants had taken over more of her body. The ocular implant had grown down into her mouth, it seemed, and she had more plating and armor across her body than flesh now.

Diana shook her head, eyes warming with tears as she realized what they had turned her into. "Sister…" She breathed, swallowing thickly once more. She blinked away the tears so she could focus on the screen, but felt her stomach raging like the tide.

Hackett was pacing around Vanessa's body. The biobed was no longer reclined. In fact, she was now propped upright, as if she could walk off at any moment. Judging from his body language, he was upset.

It was only then that Diana realized Hackett had no idea what the other admiral and Doctor Anderson had been planning. And he was just as worried as Diana now was.

 _"Hackett to Security. I need a level 5 team, full quarantine and blackout protocol to the Alpha lab. Locate Doctor Adrianna Anderson and have her brought to my office."_ Hackett's communicator didn't seem to be cooperating. Then, he noticed something off-camera and looked up, clearly confused.

" _That won't be necessary, Hackett."_ The distorted voice was speaking again. Diana realized that the modulation must have been something done to protect the spy before sending the footage to the Romulans. They didn't want to be identified, and without the raw data, there was no way of knowing precisely how it was altered.

Hackett furrowed his brow, clearly concerned. _"Admiral. I didn't think they'd call you back for this… Starfleet Intelligence - "_

" _Don't bother, I know regulation. You don't have the kind of clout and history around here like I do without knowing when you should come home to check on things."_ The voice could have been Conner, but it could have been anyone. Whoever it was, they clearly had used Hackett to get to Vanessa. _"You've done a swell job, but I've got things under control. I think I'm ready for a test run, in fact."_

" _What have you done?"_ Hackett took a few steps closer to the figure off-camera. _"We were supposed to protect Earth from the Borg, and Anderson's instead done… unspeakable things."_

" _The best weapons are just that, Admiral. Unspeakable. I like knowing that there are no words for the horror weapons can wreak. It makes it so much easier to market to the victims."_

Diana knew the sentiment seemed eerily familiar, but she couldn't dwell on it. She had noticed that which Hackett didn't. Vanessa was moving behind him.

Before Hackett could react, what was left of Vanessa Katalepis stepped off of the biobed and reached out with her newly plated, completely Borg arm. A disruptor pulse unlike anything Diana had seen before lit up the camera.

Hackett dropped like a stone. Vanessa's arm remained trained on his back. And she fired.

And fired.

And kept firing.

Until there was nothing left except a smoldering hole in the admiral's back.

The video stopped playback.

Diana stood, tears of horror running down her face.

"I… I took backups while we were watching…" Jim breathed, holding up a data padd. She could see it out of the corner of her eye, but she was still staring at the screen.

Vanessa was gone. There was nothing left. Anderson had turned her into a parademon. A Borg. Parademon. Something altogether horrific.

Diana screamed in rage, gripping the console tight. In one furious move, she ripped the console clear out of the floor and flung it through the wall of the medical office. It crashed into a display, showering sparks everywhere.

Vanessa was gone. Her _soul_ was gone, lost to Tartarus for the sins that this admiral had made her perform.

"I failed her…" Diana whispered. "I failed her again…"

Within moments, Jim was in front of her. His hands on her face, trying to coax her back, even as she stared, unblinkingly, at the green blood dried on her hands. She had never even known she was in danger. She'd known something was off, but she never _pursued_ it…

"Diana, this isn't on you…" Jim breathed, his thumbs brushing at the still falling tears.

"I failed her, Jim." She choked out. "I promised her I would save her, that she would see the shores of our homeland - "

"And you trusted Hackett. You didn't know he'd get betrayed." Jim's eyes finally forced her gaze away from her hands. The raw hurt, the pain in his eyes reminded her that she was not the only one suffering. He felt guilty… "This is just as much on me. We have to stop this before it goes any further. But, you trusted Starfleet and they let you down. They let _her_ down."

Diana stared back at him, blinking almost stupidly as she tried to focus. All she could feel was anger, self-loathing, and it was clouding everything. She lost so much, and just when she felt like she had steady footing…

"Diana, we can't help her from here. Okay? We have to go. We have to get Spock, find out what else they're planning. If you believe that we can stop them, stop _her_ from hurting anyone, then that's all that matters. So, we have to go." Jim's tone brought her back to the last great battle where she had not followed him. It had cost him his life. "Come with me. Please."

She finally swallowed, then nodded and took a step away from him. "Yes. I want to know everything." There was a threat hidden under her words.

It was a threat Jim seemed to also share. As the two of them left the sickbay, he grabbed a disruptor rifle and quickly set the dial from blue to red.

They would learn everything. And they would pay whatever price needed to stop this madness before it spilled over.

* * *

Together, they made short work of the few centurions they encountered on the medical deck. Thankfully, their opponents had begun to realize that if they valued their lives, they would do well to avoid the intruders. But, while they encountered very little resistance by way of personnel, the security procedures were well in place. Turbolifts had been taken off-line.

It had taken very little time for Jim to find and manually open an access door to a Jeffries tube - which he took great pains to explain was _not_ called a Jeffries tube and was inferior in every way to a Jeffries tube, save for the width of the tubes themselves.

They would need to climb several decks to reach the command deck where both the Commander's quarters and the bridge were located.

Jim climbed in first, and soon Diana found herself staring either up at him, or focusing on the ladder. She chose to stare at bulkhead. Her thoughts were still on Vanessa… or what had… been… Vanessa.

"So, I know why the Borg are terrifying," Jim suddenly said, cutting through the sound of their boots clanking against the metal rungs of the ladder. "But, what the hell is a Starro? And why did the Kandorians have it?"

Diana thought back to what he'd told her about his research, the fact that Kandor's A.R.G.U.S. information had been all but wiped from the Federation database. She had a sickly feeling she understood why. "When Kal-El restored Kandor, many of them did not have the same types of abilities that he did. They were able to adapt to Earth's atmosphere much better than Zod or any of the other Kryptonians Kal had faced, but it meant they needed time. So, we built the Millennium Gate: a self-sustainable civic environment, in conjunction with S.T.A.R. labs. Many of the Kandorian refugees on Themyscira had tried to settle there but found that Earth life was just... " She thought idly of Kara. Kal's cousin had given her life to stop the Eugenics War, but before that… she had been so at odds with humanity. "Earth was just too different." She finished.

If they had never left earth, would all of the Kandorians have eventually felt the way Kara did? Would they have protected humanity? Would humanity have still needed protection, if they could have outnumbered Khan?

"You realize that really makes this looks bad for your friendly neighborhood Kryptonian, right?" Jim remarked as they climbed another deck. "I'm guessing that wasn't common knowledge."

Diana sighed. "It wasn't. But, many Kandorians _did_ stay, and they offered to protect items and lifeforms that we - the League - deemed too dangerous to be held without constant surveillance. The Starro entity was one such creature. It was a parasitic alien life form that found its way to Earth. It incapacitates and feeds off of its victims by attaching itself to the face. Once it has control of the body, it controls the mind and uses the neurological energy to grow stronger." She paused as she thought back to the last time they faced it. "We nearly lost Kal to it. Conner nearly lost his father. He would _never_ let that fall into someone's hands."

Jim paused in the climb, clearly listening to her. He was considering her words. She had to hope he had started to realize that perhaps Conner was not the one responsible. "Time can change people, Diana."

"Not like that." She simply said. "But, the sooner we find Spock, the sooner we'll know for sure."

Jim nodded, then picked the pace back up to climb.

Above them, they could hear shouting. The centurions were sweeping decks, it seemed.

"You've scared the shit out of them." Jim simply remarked.

A sudden impact rocked them to the right so hard that the two of them had to each grab hold of the ladder, white-knuckled.

"Shit…" Jim breathed. She couldn't see his face, but she could imagine the scowl and note of incredulity to his voice. "They fired on my ship." He said, as if he couldn't believe their audacity.

"Even if they did, why wouldn't the warbird cloak after the attack?" Diana asked him, shifting a bit. "That was the _Enterprise_ hitting _us._ "

Jim spared a glance down at her, shrugging. "Probably because Spock was supposed to disable the cloak, and as he is insufferably good at his job…" He began to climb faster. "I am absolutely positive he did."

She spared a bit of a relieved smile, a brief respite from the turmoil in her heart. Even in the face of a crisis, Jim had several plans in motion.

Another blast, worse than the first, rocked the ship and Jim's foot slipped above her.

"Shit!" He gasped, just in time to lose his grip and start to plummet. He let out a wordless yell as he went careening just past her.

Without hesitation, Diana's hand snapped out and caught his wrist before he could fall further. He would have easily fallen two or three decks, and with another impact or tremor, there was no telling if he would have fared well at all. With the ease of lifting a pillow, she hoisted him back up and to the ladder beside her. She could share the ladder for the moment.

"Thanks…" He breathed, momentarily - and quite obviously - awestruck. "I might have to start keeping score on how many times we save each other's bacon, angel…"

Diana looked up, hearing the quick march of Romulans above them. "Don't," She replied, sparing one last look at him before she started to climb past him with a bare hint of teasing to her voice, a moment to distract her. "It will only depress you."

* * *

Ten minutes later, they had reached the command deck. From where they stood, they could hear Commander Linvah shouting on the bridge.

Jim motioned for her to follow him and the two of them crept down the hall to the commander's quarters. Two guards stood at the ready, but Jim quickly dispatched them each with a disruptor bolt.

Once the guards had collapsed to the ground, the two of them came out of hiding. Jim tried the console, then heard another error message and frowned.

"They changed the codes." He complained, then glanced up at her. After a second, he shifted his grip on the disruptor rifle and motioned with his free hand to the door. "Do the honors?"

Diana nodded and took a step back. Since she didn't know where Spock was in the room, she didn't want to knock the door off its hinges and risk injuring him. She pulled her sword and in a smooth move she'd done once before on the _Enterprise_ , she jammed the blade in the seam of the door. Within a moment, she pried it away from the right wall, then managed to get her hand into the gap and slammed the metal into its frame.

When she pulled her hand free, the impressions she left kept the door in its open position permanently.

Spock seemed perfectly fine. In fact, he seemed… placid. And he had clearly been examining a glass of Romulan ale before they walked in.

Jim was understandably put out, but he didn't miss a beat. "Seriously? They cut _my_ ears off and you're in here drinking?"

Spock stood quickly, hands behind his back. "Jim, that is not - "

Jim simply waved him off, rolling his eyes. "Save it, Casanova. I've taught you too well."

Spock's expression was hardly appreciative. The Vulcan clearly did not appreciate the insinuation that Jim had taught him how to slack on the job.

"Glad to see you're all right, Spock." Diana offered as Jim made his way over to a console. He set the rifle down on top of it as he pulled the smaller data padd where he had stored the footage from the medical bay.

"Tell me you found what we need, Spock. I need something to nail these bastards to the wall and make sure we stop them before they unleash something really nasty."

"I believe I have." Spock replied, touching a few buttons on the console beside Jim. "The Federation operative sent all of the information regarding the Medusa phenomenon and Jaylah's holo-technology to the Tal Shiar. Commander Linvah has been the She-Wolf's primary contact, and was responsible for ensuring that Jaylah was delivered into Orion hands. I have all of the communiques still salvageable."

"What are you saying?" Diana asked, concerned. "Do we not have enough to learn the spy's identity?"

"Not definitively. But, I can confirm that the communications had Starfleet Intelligence, admiralty-level clearance, and there would be very few admirals with such clearance level." Spock motioned to a particular file on the screen. "The Romulans have been planning a large-scale attack on San Francisco, Jim."

"And they want to use Medusa's curse to do it," Jim replied, scowling. "Then, we need to get back to Earth, find out when and how - "

"You will be doing no such thing, Captain." The three of them turned towards the new voice in the doorway. Commander Linvah stood alone, but no less threatening, her disruptor pistol trained on Jim. "The Romulan Star Empire has waited for this opportunity for years. You will be proven the inferior species, and with that, we shall conquer your Federation and build upon it. Rome was built on the blood of brothers. So shall the new empire."

Diana frowned. Her suspicions had been confirmed, even if the data could not provide that. "Romulus has no myth of the She-Wolf." She said, challenging Linvah for her attention. "You've been listening to rhetoric from a Federation admiral that you wish to co-opt for your own empire. You really are _just_ like the Romans. You take the gods and the cultures of those you conquer and reshape it only so far as to make it Romulan _enough_. But, you are being manipulated."

Linvah smirked, changing her aim for Diana instead. "Says the immortal hero. We know all about you, Diana of Themyscira. Wonder Woman. The She-Wolf has taken special interest in you. And will see that you pay for your interference."

The spy knew her. Diana did not get the impression that it was through reputation alone. It was not information Linvah would give freely, either.

Instead of trying to goad her into more discussion, Diana simply acted. In a blink, she had pulled her lasso and looped it around the woman's shoulders, yanking her close.

"Tell me what you know of the She-Wolf." Diana ordered. She was vaguely aware of Spock and Jim flanking her, but kept her focus solely on the Tal Shiar commander. And she was _formidable_. "The lasso will continue to cause you great pain until you answer me." She warned, hoping that it would help Linvah break sooner.

Yet, she did not. "I am a Watcher of the Shadows. I will not answer to you." Linvah clamped her mouth shut as she tried not to speak any more. She buckled, falling to her knees as the lasso grew more and more brilliant. Finally, she could hold back no longer. "The She-Wolf has been contacting the Tal Shiar for a hundred years! We erase all mention of names and no one knows the identity."

Diana frowned, but could sense the truth. "What does the She-Wolf want the Tal Shiar to do?"

"We will…" Linvah tried to fight the compulsion, but couldn't. Sweat beaded on her severe brow. "We have infiltrated the Starfleet admirals and we will… destroy… dissent. It's already begun. The bomb is… en route."

Diana's eyes widened. "En route. From where? Here?"

Linvah's eyes met Diana's, filled with hatred that she thought she would never see after the final demise of Lex Luthor. "My other warbird. You're too late. My last orders… were to keep your here. No matter the cost." The Commander opened her mind, filling Diana's with the image of her last actions.

Diana stood straight, shaken by the knowledge that suddenly flooded her. "She's set the ship to self-destruct. We have less than two minutes." She let the lasso unfurl, then knocked the commander out with a swift blow.

Jim grabbed her arm. "Then we have to go. Come on!"

Spock followed after them into the main hall, but paused. "Jim, we cannot transport back to the _Enterprise_ before the detonation. The transporter room is several decks away and they would have jammed communication signals."

Diana looked between them, then to the lasso in her hand. "But, they cannot stop your mind, Spock."

The Vulcan rose an eyebrow, confused. "I do not follow."

She held up the lasso. "The Lasso of Hestia is a seeker of truth. It enhances the gateways between minds to achieve that goal. Vulcans are low-level telepaths. You can reach Nyota, tell them to be ready for us."

Spock looked down at the relic, clearly unconvinced. "I am not certain I can do so…"

She reached out to rest her hand on his shoulder, echoing the words that he had used against Jim a few days before. "It is statistically impossible for you to be 'absolutely certain' about any one course of action, Mister Spock. But, you must try."

"Still means we have to get to the transporter room," Jim said, clearly trying to retrace their steps in his mind.

"I can do that. I might not be as fast as Barry or Kal…" Diana took a deep breath. "But I am enough." She took hold of Spock around his waist, then took Jim with the other arm. "Hold on."

Diana summoned her strength from deep within, then put one foot in front of the other. Within moments, she sped down the hall, then shifted so that she could drop down the several flights of access tubes back to the transporter room deck, using careful precision to avoid any unpleasant collisions for the two passengers she had in hand.

As they reached the transporter room, still abandoned save for the bodies she had left, the red alert klaxons sounded again.

This time… with a countdown.

"I'll get the coordinates in," Jim said quickly, making his way to the console. "You figure out how the hell they're gonna get the shields down."

Diana turned to Spock, then held out the lasso to him. "Think of her. The lasso will do the rest."

Spock slowly reached out to take the lasso from her. In that brief moment, the relic glimmered, giving her a brief glance into his mind. Given the strength of his emotions in that brief microsecond, he would have no trouble reaching Nyota. Spock closed his eyes, holding the lasso in one hand

After a few moments of tense silence, Jim finished keying the sequence behind her and Spock opened his eyes. "She has told Mister Sulu. They will be dropping the shields momentarily. I suggest we hurry."

Jim nodded, tapping a button and then bolting from the console. "Three second delay, get on the pad!"

Diana reached a transporter pad just in time to hear the countdown end.

* * *

The trio materialized on the bridge. Diana was more than surprised to see that her armor and body, which had been caked in dried blood, seemed suddenly clean. It took her longer than she wanted to admit to remember that the transporter system had some sort of organic scrubbing code.

"Glad to see you, Captain." Sulu said from the captain's chair, immediately standing.

"Same, but get us the hell out of here." Jim replied.

The ship made an about face with seconds to spare. The countdown had ended on the warbird, and now the explosions began to blossom from the hull, disappearing as quickly as they hit the . vacuum of space.

Within seconds, the stars warped around them. The _Enterprise_ was safe. For the moment.

"Get us into Federation space and hail the nearest ship." Jim said as he took his seat and Sulu moved back to the helm.

Beside her, Spock handed Diana the lasso silently before making his way over to his station. She could tell that from the look on Nyota's face, the two of them had had a significant mental conversation in the mere moments that he had held the lasso.

"The _Farragut_ is on the other side of the border," Sulu remarked. The _Enterprise_ dropped out of orbit within moments, and Diana could feel the room suddenly drain of tension.

"Good. Lieutenant Uhura, if you could open a channel - "

"No need, captain. They're hailing us." She replied quickly.

"Good. Onscreen." Jim said with a nod. Within seconds, he had relaxed into the safety of the captain's chair. Diana began to move back to her spot on the bridge.

She stopped as the face that appeared on screen belonged to none other than Conner Kent himself.

" _Captain Kirk."_ Conner said by way of greeting, arms crossed in a gesture to match his father, expression just as stern. _"It's time we talked."_


	51. To Save the World, Part 1: Teaser

**To Save the World, Part 1: Teaser**

 **Author's Note:** Okay, everyone, I hope you're ready for this! I took my holiday break, and now I am going to be posting the last two episodes without any interruptions, so by the end of this month, the adventure will CONCLUDE. I am so happy that everyone's been so riveted, and sorry I had to pause at such a Star Trek-esque cliffhanger, but I promise it's all coming together now. Thank you so much for all your support and love!

* * *

 _Attend and walk with me, my children, and I shall tell you a Tale._

 _It is a tale of a woman, born of a great love, hewn by a mighty strength, forged into a divine instrument of truth._

 _It is a tale of a man, born of a great strength, hewn by a mighty truth, forged into a divine instrument of love._

 _It is a tale of the great falsehood that time rots all things._

 _It is a tale of Wonder._

 _Attend and walk with me, my children, and I shall impart to you my Divine Wisdom._

 _For I am Pallas Athena. I am she who is now Queen of the Gods in place of my father._

 _And I have seen the greatness of Diana._

 _I have seen her courage, her capacity for love, her divine truth, her compassion._

 _I have also seen her sorrow. I have seen her heart bleed for the great riddle of man: for creatures with lives so small, they love as great as she._

 _Zeus believed that mortals were blessed by their years: to see the finality of their lives allowed them to appreciate their gifts in a way we gods never could. The great ages of man passed to him as mere seasons. But, one does not mourn the wilting of a flower. For the flower possesses no wisdom, no soul._

 _I could never be as callous as my father. One mourns the death of a good Man._

 _Long before Diana left Man's World, after she woke me from the great slumber of dead gods, I knew that she would be different from her fellow Olympians._

 _As I walked the halls of Olympus, she walked the streets of her people. She breathed the same air, shared in the same suffering, the same joys. She challenged Man's greatest enemy: himself. And yet, she still loved them._

 _However, none could she love such as she did the first Man. The man born to simple times, to simple people, who had seen horrors to rival Tartarus. In an already short life, she experienced the great sorrow of a love cut shorter._

 _But, she will be timeless, eternal in a way even I am not._

 _Even as she prayed to me in her temple, watching the waves lap the shores of Themyscira, I could see that the thread of her life would never be cut. But, while she looked to the stars in mourning for a world she had left, she could not bring herself to leave her people._

 _For a time, I saw the wisdom in this. She grew. She learned to rule as her mother did, but not to fear as her mother had._

 _But, Man in all his forms, be it human or Klingon or Romulan, knows War, knows destruction. Man needs Diana._

 _Yet, just as the sun and moon were ever bound and thus made the night and day, Diana needed an equal._

 _This is the Tale of the Champion of the Gods and the Champion of Themyscira._

 _This is the Tale of one man, forged by two lives, who becomes the Champion that my sister needs._

 _Attend and walk with me, my children, and we shall raise a glass to the man who was…_

 _James Tiberius Kirk._

* * *

 _Stardate 2264.109_

Jim didn't particularly like feeling as if another Federation ship was somehow enemy territory, but he didn't know how else to feel. The _Farragut_ , sleek and refined as she was, had carried Admiral Kent from Starfleet Headquarters to the Neutral Zone with timing that was all too convenient. For the ship to have left spacedock and made it to the border suggested that they had been on that course while Jim was rifling through the Tal Shiar's dirty laundry.

Everything kept coming up Kent.

He knew Diana didn't believe him, but he didn't have any other alternatives. The evidence kept stacking up. As far as he was concerned, he had enough.

It was the only reason that Jim had agreed to beam over to the _Farragut_ with Diana in the first place. He barely spared enough time to change into a new uniform and have Bones patch up his ears and shoulder before he was transporting over. Either way, he would confront the Admiral with what they found. If it wasn't enough, then he was looking at more than a demotion. He was looking at a court martial.

But, he had a feeling that with Diana there, it wouldn't come to that.

It had taken too long to at least convince the captain of the ship to set course to San Francisco along with the _Enterprise_. Warnings of a bomb were heeded, but Jim didn't know if the threat would be taken seriously. Until the evidence was presented, he couldn't guarantee Kent would even pass the message on.

They had had no time to breathe since leaving the Romulan warbird. Even now, as they marched down the corridors to the briefing room on the _Farragut_ with her captain, he and Diana had never had a chance to speak.

He had told her to trust the Federation, and they had let them both down. He didn't even know where to begin, but he just wanted to hold her, to give her a single moment to be vulnerable, to let down her guard.

He wanted to drink himself under the table for a night, to forget that he'd have another face and name to add to his list of mistakes. Didn't matter the lifetime, he still seemed to solve that particular problem with the same vice.

"Captain Kirk, I know you have a reputation as a bit of a maverick, but I didn't think I'd literally have to pluck you out of an undercover operation." Captain Garrovick said as he led them down the corridors of deck two. "You look like hell, Jim."

In spite of the severity of the situation, he couldn't help but send a sideways smile his way. "You know, I've always wondered: is that above or below 'death warmed over' on the scale of how bad a mission can go?"

Garrovick grinned, shaking his head. "I try to never let it get that far. I just hope you're ready to face the music. Admiral Kent is pissed."

"He will have a lot to explain himself," Diana spoke up beside Jim. When he glanced over at her, her expression was still dark, brow knit with concern. If she didn't agree with Jim, she was staying true to her word: they'd present a united front until the answers were made plain.

He was asking her to believe that her nephew was capable of treason, mass murder, and torture...

He wasn't even sure he could believe it.

"I look forward to hearing about all of this." Captain Garrovick said, a bit sardonically, before the doors to the briefing room opened and the trio filed in.

Admiral Kent sat at the end of the table, leaned back a bit with a deep frown etched into his features. The guy had certainly perfected the same kind of technique Chris Pike had used over the years to take whatever lines were on his face and use them as an entirely different level of chastisement.

"Admiral," Jim began, although he wasn't sure where to go from there.

"Kirk, I don't want to hear a word out of your mouth until I hear from the Ambassador." Kent snapped. "I just found out you crossed the Neutral Zone, infiltrated a Tal Shiar vessel without the consent of anyone in Starfleet, stole sensitive intelligence, and created one hell of a diplomatic incident, so unless the next words out of your mouth are going to be 'I'm sorry', then - "

"Your father would be ashamed of you." Diana cut him off so abruptly that Jim whipped his head around to look at her.

The silence was so profound, they could have heard a pin drop.

Conner Kent's very rough, foreboding appearance slowly crumbled in the face of Diana's impending anger and disappointment.

"Do you remember when you were Superboy?" Diana asked, stepping past Jim and moving closer to Conner's side of the room. "Do you remember when you were convinced that Deathstroke was working for Lex Luthor, and none of us felt that you had the evidence? You went off on your own, you took out Luthor's facility, and you came back with all of the intelligence in hand. And your father pulled the exact same stunt that you just did. Do you remember what I told him?"

When Conner didn't reply, Jim could tell it wasn't because he didn't recall; he didn't want to have to admit it.

So, Diana obliged for the rest of the room.

"A general leads their soldiers, they fight with their soldiers, they die with their soldiers. A soldier is family." She said emphatically, striking an arrow close to the heart, one even Jim could see. "You do not send anyone into battle that you cannot trust to do the right thing without guidance. You demand an apology from him when you have no idea why we were even in the Neutral Zone. That is _not_ how we taught you to lead. That may be Starfleet, but that is not a member of the Justice League." Diana stood straighter, her hand moving to her hip as she continued. "Now, you will treat him with more respect and with honesty or so help me, I will use the lasso to ensure that you do. Is that _clear_ , Conner?"

In the past, Jim had found witnessing interactions with Admiral Kent and Diana to be uncomfortable and awkward. Not this time, however. The shame that flickered across Conner's face for just a moment suggested that Diana had hit home and that he had needed to hear it.

Jim wasn't sure how that would help or hurt the case for his innocence or guilt in all of this.

Only one way to find out.

"Unless, of course, Admiral, you have a reason not to be honest with us." Naturally, Jim decided to just dive right into the shark tank sans archaic cage.

Diana caught Jim's eye. He masked his obvious relief that there was no hesitation or silent request to go easy. Apparently, Kent's attitude had given her more reason to suspect him than to trust him.

"I have a feeling you know precisely why we were in the Neutral Zone," Jim continued, turning a bit to fully face Conner. "The fact is, someone in Starfleet has been feeding every bit of the _Enterprise's_ databanks regarding tactical advantages to the Romulan Empire. We've had warbirds watching our moves, casting my crewmembers adrift into the Orion slave trade, and they've been trying to erase anything that we could use to connect back to the Admiral in question."

"You think a Starfleet Admiral is colluding with the Romulans?" Captain Garrovick spoke up.

Jim hesitated for a moment, sympathetic to the captain's plight. It was the first time he'd heard any of it. He needed to give him a moment to breathe it in.

But, Jim never took his eyes off of Conner. Unfortunately, if Jim had given him any cause for concern, it wasn't obvious. He continued on. "Yes, based on a number of factors. Our command codes were compromised months ago, but no one in Starfleet has given us new ones because our request for codes was mysteriously erased from our system logs. Along with other Admiralty-level clearance information. I was already suspicious of the fact that you asked me to purposely put blame on Diana in the Starfleet hearing, only to turn around and vote for my demotion. Then, I find a worm in our databanks that's mysteriously only wiping out the intelligence related to the cadet you and I took a mutual interest in, as well as anything related to the old Earth organization A.R.G.U.S.

"In addition, we have transponder signals that trace the Starfleet operative known as 'She-Wolf' back to the Federation. Lieutenant Uhura successfully decoded the signals and determined that all of the subspace relays used attribute the signal to yourself, Admiral. Between that and the fact that we have physical evidence suggesting that Starfleet Intelligence has been experimenting on Vanessa Katalepis, Admiral Hackett is dead, and that they've been using technology gleaned from the records of something called Watchtower and that sounds an _awful_ lot like the only admiral to have his roots going back to Kandor. Or as you might know it, the Millennium Gate."

Jim took the data padd from his pocket and handed to his fellow captain so he could review it. "So, you want to tell me why I should believe for even a second that this act of the play isn't just to set me up for the fall?"

As the captain reviewed the datapadd beside him, he watched Conner intently, hoping to see a crack in the facade.

"Conner, I do not want to think that you could ever be capable of what we have seen, but you and I are the only ones alive who still know of the Kandorian storehouse." Diana took a few steps closer, resting her hands on the table and leaning forward to stare him down. "Someone in Starfleet Intelligence used Starro DNA and fused it with Vanessa. Please... tell me that wasn't you."

Conner slowly sat up, eyes still on the woman that Jim was fairly certain was the only reason he still had a career. For the first time since he'd put all the pieces together, Jim saw clear surprise on his face, and it made him wonder if the picture he'd made was the wrong one. Conner was honestly dismayed at her words. "Diana, I watched what that thing did to my father. I would _never_..."

"Then explain how all of this leads to you." She unhooked the lasso, setting it down in front of him. "Tell us."

Conner looked up at her for a long moment, then took the rope, winding it around his arm. It began to glow as he turned to look at Jim.

"I didn't vote to demote you because I thought you did anything wrong." Conner didn't seem to be in any sort of discomfort. When Jim cast a glance at Diana, her expression suggested the lasso was working as it should, that he wasn't lying. "And I already knew Hackett had died. It was covered up quickly. I've been aware that someone in Starfleet was watching your ship since you found Diana." Conner sighed, shaking his head. "I knew it was bad, but the Starro... I would never visit that horror on anyone."

"So, why did you try to demote me?" Jim asked. "Why cut me out? Why not tell me that you had suspicions? And why is your name all over this?"

Conner shook his head. "You're saying you honestly think I'd be smart enough to set you up, but not smart enough to cover my tracks. I only voted to demote you when I realized that Cale wanted to keep you on duty. I didn't trust _her_."

Jim frowned as he noticed the way Diana arched an eyebrow. Something in what he said had gotten her attention. So, he pressed the issue. "Why?"

"She doesn't like Diana. She had a grudge the moment we walked into that hearing. Veronica Cale is the head of Starfleet Intelligence, but she's not a warhawk like Marcus - "

"Veronica Cale?" Diana asked, shock plain on her face. Clearly, the name had meaning. "Did you just say Veronica Cale?" Oh, he had a bad feeling he had told her all the wrong details about his hearing...

Conner nodded, although he looked like was as much in the dark as Jim was on why that name meant anything.

"Of course..." Diana breathed, reaching over. In one smooth move, she unfurled the lasso and slipped it back on her hook, even as Jim opened his mouth to protest. He didn't get very far before she turned away, pacing across the room. "Anderson, Watchtower, watching Jim and the _Enterprise_ , the She-Wolf... By the gods, it _is_ her."

"What are you saying?" Jim asked, catching her eye. "You know her?"

"Yes." Diana paused mid-step, then pivoted to face them. "She was a pharmaceutical magnate in the 21st century. She was just as as insidious as Lex Luthor and three times as charismatic." She took a step closer to Jim. It was clear from her expression that pieces had fit into place in a wholly new way. "We've been working under the wrong assumption. We thought only one person in Starfleet knew about my time as Wonder Woman. Veronica Cale does."

"Is that possible?" Garrovick asked behind Jim.

"When you have a heart that dark," Diana said with a frown. "Anything is possible."


	52. To Save the World, Part 1: Act I

**To Save the World, Part 1: Act I**

Diana had many enemies, both timeless and mortal, but she had never expected to hear from Veronica Cale. Her throat went dry as she found herself scrying for answers in the warp bubble in the viewport, only to come up empty.

"You're suggesting that Admiral Veronica Cale is... the same woman you knew from that far back?" Diana knew that Jim was asking more for Conner and the captain's benefit, but it was a fair question. It was only that he did not understand _how_ she knew.

"Not suggesting." Diana said, crossing her arms over her chest. "I know. It is the Truth, Jim." Before he could protest or ask for more, she glanced over at Conner and motioned to the briefing room table. "Can I see a picture of her? There were no records of anyone matching the name Veronica Cale in all of the data available to me on the Enterprise. I thought perhaps she just vanished, but..."

"But, she's Starfleet Intelligence," Conner grumbled as he quickly set to work on the console. "She can omit records without you ever knowing."

"Like the records on Kandor," Jim muttered to himself. "I just saw the first initial, I assumed it was a first name…"

The moment Admiral Cale's image appeared on the table, Diana leaned forward to scrutinize it. But, there was little doubt. In fact, the moment she caught a glimpse of the ring on Cale's hand... she knew.

"That ring." Diana pointed to it as Jim came around the table to stand beside her. "She told me once it was an heirloom. Not of her family, but to her own personal success. The gem was made out of the ashes of her mother, as a reminder of where she came from. She told me once that she would hold onto that ring until she died." She began to scan through the records available to them, but it was useless. Most of the information was too factual, yet off by just enough so as to suggest she was possibly a descendant. "Veronica had one daughter, Isadore, but she's not listed anywhere in this woman's family tree."

"So, it's probably falsified." Jim said in agreement.

"I have no idea how she could have survived this long..." Diana breathed, then glanced over at Conner, stomach slowly knotting as she considered the very real danger before them. "How did you not know that she was alive?"

Conner's eyebrows shot up. "Are you serious? Diana, I have dinner with two of the Luthors once a month."

"How could you - " Diana began, unsure if what she felt was honest concern or confusion, or perhaps both. What Lex had done to Kal… to _Conner_ and _Lois_ … And Conner was breaking bread with them?

"Don't look at me like that." Conner said, in a tone remarkably like the boy she'd once known. "Supervillains have kids, but not all those kids turn out to be villains. Hell, the Thawnes married _into_ the West-Allens! And... I'll be honest, I know you clearly recognize her, but..." He shrugged. "Unless she did something blatantly illegal, why would I have known that she was a threat to you?"

Diana opened her mouth, prepared to level another stern criticism his way, but paused. Veronica had been so profoundly dangerous _precisely_ because she had learned how to curry political and societal favor better than even Diana could have.

"No, you're right." She conceded. "I'm sorry. That would be like asking you if you remembered the CEO of Pfizer. To the outside world, Cale was just a pharmaceutical giant. Cale-Anderson Pharmaceuticals never took the plummet that it should have, even after I exposed Dr. Anderson's cybernetic violations. And Cale herself..." Diana sighed and stepped away. She leaned against the bulkhead behind her as she recalled, "She was an architect of chaos, never its instrument."

"What made her so dangerous to you?" Jim asked. He had that look of honest concern on his face, mixed with the thoughtfulness that suggested he was creating several plans at once. In that, he was the best of Bruce and Steve.

"She didn't like my message of peace, of hope..." Diana's heart clenched as she recalled the way Cale had slandered her, created the perfect environment for Darkseid to attack Earth. "She found it simplistic and naive. Over time, that fostered into a personal vendetta as I realized that she was not just making pharmaceuticals, she was a war profiteer." Of all the villains she faced, Diana had hoped that the evil Cale wielded had truly been taken from the earth. She was the worst kind of enemy: the type that genuinely believed she did nothing wrong. "I nearly caught her, once. She had been working clandestinely with LuthorCorp to manufacture a Kryptonian plague in the hopes of killing Kal-El. Only it backfired and was lethal to humans. So, she sold it to Qurac terrorists, then sold the placebo vaccine to the Quraci government. She was quite adept at marketing her solutions to the problems she created."

Jim suddenly stood straight, as if struck by a bolt of lightning. "Holy shit, she _is_ the She-Wolf."

Captain Garrovick arched an eyebrow as he struggled to keep up with the trio. Any mirth or confusion was masked by clear concern by the information he was hearing. Diana could sense it from where she stood across the room, even as she tried to rein her abilities in. "Okay, care to share with the class, Jim?"

Jim motioned for the datapadd in her hand, then began to scroll through it. "Something the distorted voice said on one of those files with Vanessa, just before Hackett died..."

Jim used a quick couple of commands between the datapadd and the briefing room table to play the surveillance footage from the point just before Hackett was killed.

 _"We were supposed to protect Earth from the Borg, and Anderson's instead done... unspeakable things."_

 _"The best weapons are just that, Admiral. Unspeakable. I like knowing that there are no words for the horror weapons can wreak. It makes it so much easier to market to the victims."_

Jim stopped the playback. "There. That doesn't sound like an Admiral, but it sure as hell sounds like what you just described."

Diana's heart sank. That was what had felt so familiar about all of that, but she had been so focused on Anderson, she had missed the context clue. "She's doing the same thing here. She plans to unleash the Medusa poison, blame the Romulans and she will use it to goad Starfleet into giving her more resources to create worse weapons." It all fit her pattern of behavior all too intimately. If only they could have possibly seen it sooner... "Meanwhile, she feeds the Romulans better technology and then urges the Federation to attack. She doesn't care who wins, only that she continues to profit from it."

"And while we're not exactly currency-based, the Ferengi and the Klingon still are..." Conner said with a frown. "I had hoped cutting you loose would make it easier for you to find evidence against Cale, but nothing like this..."

"You know what would have made that easier? If you had told us of your suspicions." Jim said, not caring to pull his punches. She didn't blame him.

But, Diana could also see the way Conner's shoulders had slumped, the deep furrow in his brow. She reached over and rested her hand on his shoulder, squeezing gently. He glanced up at her, and for a moment, she saw the boy beneath all of those years once more.

"I know it can seem tempting to rule above, not among." Diana said softly, recalling her own time as the Queen of Themyscira. "But, you are not alone. Not anymore. Stop shutting us out."

Conner inhaled, then swallowed thickly as he considered her words. She didn't need to have divine abilities to know that she had spoken the truth. Sometimes, for the son of a Superman, Conner could be more human than anyone. She needed to remember that just as much as he did.

"Captain," Conner said, turning to the Farragut's commanding officer. "Contact the _Enterprise_. Increase speed to Maximum warp and send word to Starfleet Command. Evacuate Federation and Starfleet command structures, put everything on lockdown. I'll hail the Fleet Admiral myself."

"We don't know what they're looking for," Garrovick said with a frown. "I can point us in the right direction, but there's no way of knowing what they're sending to earth or how they'll position it."

Diana knew that there was still much for her to learn of the 23rd century, technological advances and principles chief among them, but she had had the benefit of spending a full day with the foremost expert in hiding things.

"You're looking for a hologram." She said, feeling yet another ring of Truth through her veins. She caught Jim's eye, relieved that they both seemed to be of the same mind.

"Jaylah's research. That's what they wanted it for." Jim continued, eyes darting as he recalled all of the research that he'd combed through for days. "Cale must have found - or thinks she's found - a way to weaponize the Medusa curse. Jaylah had figured out how to create a hologram about the size of a box, easy enough to hide and smuggle to the surface."

Conner looked to Garrovick with a scowl. "Get Chekov and send him over to the _Enterprise_." He shifted his attention to Jim, who seemed dubious. "Captain, I think it's best if we get the best engineers on the job. They need to figure out how to track the bomb before we get there."

It was clear that Conner was trying to restore Jim's trust; Diana could recognize the olive branch.

The gesture was returned with a professional nod. She caught Jim's eye for just a moment before he replied to Conner. "I completely agree, Admiral. Jaylah and Scotty will get right on it."

"Then we'll have the best minds at work," Diana breathed.

Garrovick nodded in agreement. "Agreed. But, what about Admiral Cale? If all of this is to be believed - "

"Then we'll take her in the old fashioned way," Conner replied. "The ambassador and I will take care of that. We gather more evidence, back it up offline. But, the civilians come first. That bomb _has_ to be stopped."

As much as she hoped that the knowledge they were increasing speed would make her feel better, as the captain left without another word, she felt no relief.

But, they did have time to work uninterrupted. And the only way to stop more destruction was to have a plan. Times like this, she wished for Etta's British efficiency.

Diana glanced over at Jim, then motioned for him to have a seat on one side of Conner. She took the other.

"Even once we figure out where the bomb is, we need to figure out how to disarm it and how to pin Cale to this..." Jim said, going through his datapadd. Judging from his expression, he was reviewing the communiques Spock had been able to find. "There's nothing that connects her to the She-Wolf, not from these."

"The fact that she's using Roman myth as her codename at least makes her an Earth native," Conner offered, although his confidence sounded shaken. For a brief moment, she recalled the broken man she had seen on _Yorktown_. She could not - and _he_ could not - afford to have so much taken from him.

"Veronica is _very_ good at covering her tracks, Conner." Diana said, reassuringly. "But, you're not omniscient, nor are you an engineer. Veronica has Leslie Anderson working with her, which means she has someone who can read code like we breathe air."

"That just makes her harder to catch," He replied softly.

"Not for you. I don't know the inner workings of Starfleet like you do. Not even Jim knows. But, you built the organization." She caught the somewhat dubious look Jim shot her, but she ignored it. His ego was, most often, earned and fairly muted. She wasn't about to indulge him right now. "If we can connect her to Vanessa and Hackett's death, then we can prove that she is the same operative from the other communiques."

Conner nodded, leaning back a bit as he tried to think. He was, in many ways, just like his father, but as he closed his eyes and rested his hands on his forehead, she could tell he was thinking through problems like his mother. "Just need to know how the engine works..." He muttered, clearly wrapped up in thought.

Jim glanced up at her, and she smiled softly. She would explain to him later that it was a Lois Lane-ism of the finest quality. She had always taught her son to scrutinize the world like a reporter: to understand the engine of the world meant one could change it. Or repair it.

"You said she was a magnate, rich and powerful, worked with the Luthors." Conner finally said, sitting back up and bending back over the console in front of him to type.

"Yes." Diana replied. "She even knew Bruce, but he was known for keeping enemies closer than friends, so..." She shrugged, trying not to remind herself of how infuriating some of Bruce's habits could be. For a man as profoundly intelligent as he was, his greatest superpower, as Vic so often put it, was being an "asshole." That included forging business relationships with some of the most crooked businessmen and women in the world. Luthor, Cale, even Falcone for a time before he took him down.

"Then, I think I know where we might start to find some answers on how she's still alive." A series of log entries suddenly began to overlay on the briefing table screen as Conner kept typing. "I kept a... journal of sorts when I was in the League. On an old pre-Eugenics War internet server. I uploaded copies to Watchtower, then made sure they... didn't make it into Starfleet's databases when I returned to the world. But, I wasn't the only one. Damian did, too."

Jim looked up, clearly trying to recall the history that - to Conner - seemed second nature. "Batman's son."

"And the architect of the Augment virus, hoping he could create a new generation of superpowered heroes." Diana replied in agreement. "I warned him against it, but he had very little interest in any of us."

"I think I know why. Bruce was known to keep his friends close, but his enemies closer. I don't think Damien shared that understanding." Conner said, pulling down a log entry and opening it. The text was plain, but he had highlighted keywords. "Look at Damian's backers. Cale, Lena Luthor... He didn't want to stop because he had _who_ he wanted. Damian was convinced that the solution to mankind's problems was to create the next Superman, not inherit one." He motioned to himself a bit idly. "And Luthor had a strange sense of entitlement over my birth."

Diana remembered the events well, but knew Jim would be surprised. She had told him much, but there were decades of tales to tell. She'd only had a few days to really be honest.

"I'm sorry, how does a billionaire feel entitled to your birth?" Jim asked.

"He was obsessed with Kryptonian DNA. He kidnapped my mother at one point, made modifications to her genetic structure so he could ensure that I would be conceived." Conner paused, his expression wistful, but pained in a way that suggested he hadn't discussed it in some time. Diana reached over to rest her hand on his. "There's a good chance Damian thought his father had made allies with these two because they were _not_ Lex. Lena always seemed squeaky clean, interested in undoing the sins of her father, and judging from the context clues, I don't think Damian even knew about Cale's profiteering."

Diana pursed her lips, recalling Bruce's troubled offspring. "I am not sure it would have stopped him, to be honest..."

"I know." Conner simply agreed, falling silent. She knew that the man had died centuries ago, but she understood the grief Conner felt better than most. She simply did not have the words to make it disappear.

"So, maybe she's an Augment, if she worked with him on the Virus." Jim offered.

Diana shook her head. "Veronica did not sample her wares. But, it's possible she worked with Damian on a different solution." She could sense the Truth in what she was saying, but didn't have enough to understand what they were still missing. They would need to continue digging.

"I don't know how to explain it, but I _know_ that this is somehow related to the Augment virus. This goes back as far as Veronica's grudge against me can go." She glanced over at Jim, who had rose an eyebrow and was watching her intently. "I believe this is the culmination of far more planning than just the last year."

Jim looked at her for a long moment. She caught the subtle way his gaze softened. She had always recognized when he'd shifted from captain to friend, but she'd never realized what had done it.

It was his eyes.

Jim cleared his throat and exhaled in a soft hiss as he squinted, considering her words before offhandedly replying, "Well, if you believe that's the case, that's good enough for me." He flicked his gaze over to Conner before shrugging. "She's been right about all of this so far. She knew it wasn't you even when I thought I had an ironclad case."

Conner nodded a bit. He didn't seem upset, he seemed impressed. "Well, Cale must have realized I was looking into her. I'm sure she knew exactly what she was doing when she sent her message with my transponder signal."

Careful to keep the conversation focused on their mutual enemy, Diana leaned forward to look at the journal entries Conner still had up. "What else does Damian say about her in his journals? If Cale-Anderson Pharma helped back his work, it must have been quite clandestine…" As Diana scrolled through and blew up one of the entries, her heart sank as she recognized the context behind that particular entry. "Ah..." Diana sat back a bit in the chair, eyes warming with a sudden reminder of old grief. "Damian states that Cale approached him just after the Gotham bridges were rebuilt." She glanced up at Jim, thoughtful and pained. "The year Lois died. I wasn't exactly focused on Cale."

Conner exhaled deeply beside her. There didn't seem to be much to say. While Jim had never officially met Lois, she had spoken at length about her. It wasn't surprising that Jim had wanted to know how Kal and Lois functioned in their marriage. Her plight and Jim's were the same: mortality. But, her loss…

Her loss had left one of the greatest chambers empty in Diana's heart. Another sister lost.

"Maybe an outside perspective would help," Jim said, sitting up a bit. As he pulled the entries away from her side of the table so he could review them, the quick look her way suggested that it was as much a genuine offer as it was an opportunity to let the two people who knew Lois recover from the poignant reminder.

Diana simply nodded, smiling in gratitude before she swallowed down a lump in her throat. She reached over to squeeze Conner's hand, but didn't linger. Diana had mourned Lois as a friend and sister. Conner had mourned Lois as a mother and as the reason his father left.

"You have to be kidding me." Jim suddenly said, clearly displeased with the results of his research. When Diana and Conner both looked to him quizzically, he finally offered an explanation as he blew up the journal entry larger. "Veronica Cale introduced Damian Wayne to Khan Noonian Singh."

"You can't be serious." Diana hissed, reading the passage for herself. Sure enough, the references to Khan were plain and obvious. Damian had been introduced to a man claiming to be a pharmaceutical entrepreneur in a time when that meant everything. "She put them on the path to creating the Augments, to causing the war. Even after I warned Damian that Khan was amoral, willing to sell drugs that had no business being on the market…"

Conner was clearly reading other entries in the same time frame at his seat. "It explains why it took Damian so long to come around. He thought Khan was a kindred spirit." He scowled as he read the text in front of him. Diana hated that he was forced to revisit the sins, the betrayals of the past. "Damian's entries state that he thought the man would have been a suitable Head of the Demon. My guess is that it took him far too long to realize that there is no such thing as a reasonable Ra's Al Ghul."

Diana shook her head and pushed off of the table. She stood, hands on her hips as she paced angrily. "That boy knew exactly what the League of Assassins had done to his father and his mother, yet he still was tempted by their darkness…"

Jim spoke up after a moment. "Sometimes all it takes for the darkness to win is for people to believe the light isn't going to get them anywhere."

Diana stopped mid-step as the words rang true. She couldn't help but smile. _Glad to know that you watch us even from Elysium, Lois_ … She thought, certain that the words had been inspired by one reporter whose hunger for the truth matched Diana's.

And that was the key to understanding Veronica Cale.

"That's what Veronica wants to do." Diana said, pivoting slowly. "This is about more than this current conflict. She wants to see people - civilizations - spin their wheels. So she can line her pockets with each turn." She made her way back to the table. "Now, even if we're not sure how she's still alive, there has to be a way to connect her back to Hackett's death, to Vanessa, and to the bomb."

"I think I might have an idea on that one. " Jim spoke up, although he wasn't looking at any of the evidence before them. He seemed to be staring at the floor, or perhaps a blank spot on the table. Whatever he was giving his attention to required his mind's eye, not his physical ones. "She mentioned collecting the Starro from a facility at the Millennium Gate. Was that always government-run?"

Diana's eyebrows rose as she considered the implications of that. "It was a joint effort by the League, A.R.G.U.S. and S.T.A.R. Labs, but I've no idea what happened after the war."

Thankfully, Conner could fill in that particular gap. "Watchtower was destroyed, for the most part, so we lost access to the facility." He removed all of Damian's journals from the display on the table, then brought up a number of database entries. They were all A.R.G.U.S. or MACO. "Almost everything A.R.G.U.S. was absorbed by the Northern Faction after the Eugenics War. If it wasn't, or if it was S.T.A.R. Labs, well…" He shrugged. "I'm not sure, but I think they were bought up by private companies." He fell silent as he scanned the information in front of him, looking for something specific. When he found it, Diana recognized the expression. What Conner found was both satisfying to know, but… ultimately not good news. "Millennium Gate's storehouses were acquired by CAP Manufacturing in 2055. Prior to the Eugenics War, they operated as Cale-Anderson Pharmaceuticals."

Jim frowned a bit, leaning back in his chair so he could rest one leg on the other. "Private property is owned _now_ , but it's more based on an allocation system. How would a corporation like that still have access to a facility like that?"

Not for the first time, Diana found herself frustrated by her lack of knowledge about the full history of earth. She had missed enough time that the very economy had changed significantly. When she had left, Earth needed currency and barter. When she returned, the Federation had surpassed that into a truly restorative economy that required no currency to ensure basic had to rely on Conner to help fill in the rocky transition.

"My guess is that, assuming Veronica did the same as me and simply lived several lives in slightly different roles," Conner said with a frown, although he still sounded like Lois Lane's son with his voracious need to get to the truth. "She held onto it until MACO was formed, then probably rolled it under a defense contract of some kind. As currency-based commerce disappeared, she just hid it from prying eyes."

"Is there any way we can find out for sure?" Jim asked, reaching up to scratch at his newly regenerated earlobe. Even though they were racing against time, hoping they could somehow beat Cale at her own game, he seemed calm and in control. She was fairly certain part of him was enjoying it.

Conner leaned back in his seat, deep in thought with his gaze focused on the table. After a long moment of consideration, he nodded and stood. "I can get that information. I have a few strings I can pull back at Starfleet Command, a few admirals who are also loyal to me."

Diana furrowed her brow in confusion, honestly surprised as he made his way to the door. "Where are you going?"

"To hail the Fleet Admiral for the head's up and to make a few calls." Conner paused, turning to face Diana with an expression that she'd seen on his father's face all too many times. He had realized that there was more to be done apart than together. "I don't know how Cale's alive, but I'm sure you can figure it out. Let me worry about getting the rest of the evidence together… be ready for... " His eyes flicked over to the briefing table. The images of Vanessa had been long gone, but the haunted expression on his face said volumes. "For anything." He finished.

Conner pivoted, continuing out the door. With his absence, Diana found herself - for the first time since they had left the warbird - alone with Jim.

And she had nothing but a whirlwind of thoughts to sort through. Most prominent… was still the revelation that Veronica Cale was alive. And that Diana had delivered one of her Amazons sisters into her hands.

Of all the crimes, it was the most personal to Diana, but not the most horrendous. Diana could not even bring herself to mourn her sister. Until she saw Vanessa with her own eyes, until the greater threat was extinguished…

Vanessa would have to be no different than the countless Amazons that died in the many great causes that her sisters had sacrificed themselves for.

And her sacrifice would be in vain if Diana could not end this mania before it could truly begin.

"Hey." In the deafening silence, Jim had still - somehow - managed to catch her off-guard. He had crossed the distance between them until he could reach up and brush a strand of hair from her eyes. While she had been synthetically scrubbed by the transporters, she felt… unclean. Jim's touch made that sensation slightly less prominent. "We're gonna get her."

It was such a simple declaration. In fact, he said it with the same level of gravitas that he ordered coffee from the mess hall, yet she could tell… he unequivocally believed what he was saying.

" _You're_ gonna get her." He added softly, his fingers drifting to her cheek.

The words did not go unheeded. Diana slowly raised her gaze to meet his, inhaling deeply. As she did so, she could feel her burden slowly begin to ease. In the few months since she had first experienced the sensation of Jim's genuine belief, she had started to learn how to suppress the sensation, not to rely on it. She didn't want worship. She wasn't a goddess - not like the others.

But, it seemed that with their new state of intimacy, she would find it harder to ignore.

As she found herself lost for a moment in his intense gaze, he drew her a bit closer and ran his hand along her arm in a way that helped to untwist the knots in her stomach.

Her mind cleared.

He had said so very little. But, he believed in her so much it was _woven_ through her body, her very sinew and between the cells.

Perhaps that was what the Fates meant when they wove the great tapestry of life.

"If I cannot determine how she lived this long, then cutting off one head will only spring three more." Diana finally broke the silence between them. Her voice was crystal clear, but she was careful not to remove the gratitude from her tone. Even as the two of them had another mystery to solve, she did not want him for a moment to think his support was unneeded or unappreciated. "It could be any of number of things."

"Then, you tell me where to start. Your gut hasn't led us wrong yet." Jim Kirk yet again proved that he had learned the age old lesson of command: collaboration. If he had a particular theory or narrative he wanted to push, he had completely abandoned it. He made his way over to the table, leaning over it as if they were looking at old maps at Chief's campsite, not state of the art computers that could recall any information instantaneously.

Without hesitation, Jim deferred to her. He trusted her to know her wheelhouse, as it were.

That thought alone helped drain the last of her melancholy, long enough to let her focus on the task at hand.

"Veronica was highly motivated," Diana began as she, too, joined him at the table. "Given that she knew to purchase the Millennium Gate facility, it stands to reason that she already knew she was going to live longer than the typical human." She bit her lip for a moment as she considered the psychological profile that Diana had once had by memory on the woman. "She wouldn't have used the Augment Virus, or anything else that Cale-Anderson designed. She knew the risks of her own handiwork, and she would never relinquish that kind of control."

"So, if she didn't use medicine to do it, how else could she?" He asked, voicing the same question that she was mulling over.

Diana simply shook her head, then motioned to the table. "Can you show me more recent images of her? The Starfleet profile image doesn't tell me anything about her."

Jim perked up for a moment before he hurriedly began to key the console. "I actually think I can do one better. The _Enterprise_ might have had a worm chewing at important details, but I bet the _Farragut_ doesn't. Not if your nephew is aboard."

Diana paused and honestly did a double take as she caught that Jim meant _Conner._ Her eyebrows shot up, eyes wide in surprise.

When she didn't answer him, Jim glanced up at her, realizing what he'd done. "I mean… the Admiral."

She tilted her head a bit as she realized he was trying to hide his embarrassment. Quirking an eyebrow and crossing her arms, she cocked her hip a little. "How long have you been calling him that in your mind?"

Jim hesitated for a long moment before shrugging. "Probably longer than I would ever want to admit."

Diana bit back a grin.

"Anyway, as I was saying…" Jim continued, clearing his throat as he touched a button on the console. "There's footage of the hearing. I zoomed in on her."

Diana leaned closer, watching the display flare to life once more with new footage. She could hear Jaylah speaking off-camera, only to see Cale reply with that same velvety, manipulative tone that made Diana's skin crawl.

"Mute the audio," Diana muttered. "That is definitely her."

With a quick nod, he obliged and silenced the audio. Now that Diana only had the video to watch, she could focus on the other aspects of her.

She still wore the ring made from her mother's ashes, still wore her hair the same in a long, straight blonde bob.

It still boggled the mind. Veronica was not the military type, she was a businesswoman. She only would have moved to the military upon realizing that would be the more advantageous position. Yet, how could she have known that she had so much time?

Veronica's hand moved to her neck onscreen, toying with something at her collar.

"Pause the video." Diana quickly ordered, thankful that Jim seemed to be anticipating she might make such a request. "Can you zoom in on what's in her hand?"

"Sure."

The magnification increased exponentially, then sharpened the image.

"She is wearing a _relic_." Diana breathed, motioning for Jim to come closer so she could point it out. Within moments, he was beside her. She motioned to the necklace that Veronica was in the process of worrying between her thumb and index finger.

"I remember seeing those, a string of pearls she wore everywhere…" Jim muttered. "I thought it was odd. Not many Starfleet officers wear much jewelry unless it's religious."

Diana furrowed her brow. "It has religious significance, but not to Veronica. She cares little for the gods. Do you see the Koine etched into them?" Diana reached out, grabbing for the stylus that allowed her to write on the display. She quickly copied the characters, then pointed to each as she spoke. " _Kalyptousa to dianooumenon.'_ The wearer of this necklace 'conceals the knowledge'. I found this relic with Arthur in the 2020s. It is the necklace of Calypso, the daughter of Atlas and Pleione. She was blessed with youth and life as a nymph as long as she remained on the island of Ogygia."

"Calypso, as in… the character in the _Odyssey?_ " She could tell he was having a hard time wrapping that around his rational mind, but was willing to accept it.

"Yes." Diana tapped the stylus on table idly as she recalled the past. "She was real, just as Circe is. When Arthur found the pearls, it was in the belly of Charybdis. And they were broken, so I had them sent them for display. I thought them powerless, deserving to be in a museum."

"Which museum?"

Pieces fell into place as she realized her folly. "The Louvre." Diana stood straight, trying to remember the exact order of events. " _Before_ I fought Medusa. The only time we ever lost artifacts while I worked with them was after we defeated Darkseid and Circe made her first appearance. She could have stolen them, reforged them." She shook her head. "But, Circe's been banished from earth for centuries, and I don't recall Cale and her ever meeting."

"We might have to ask Cale herself." Jim finally offered with a shrug.

That thought brought her no comfort, but it did seem to be the only choice. "At least I know that if I remove the pearls, I stop her from cheating death." She said, swearing as if taking an oath. "And she will face others. Justice will be done."

No sooner than the words left her mouth, the lights suddenly flashed to red in the briefing room and the klaxons sounded on the _Farragut._

After a moment, they heard Captain Garrovick's voice over the intercom.

" _All hands to battle stations! Romulan warbird decloaked in orbit around the lunar station! Captain Kirk and Ambassador Prince, report to the bridge!"_


	53. To Save the World, Part 1: Act II

**To Save the World, Part 1: Act II**

Captain Garrovick was a solid commanding officer, one who didn't seem prone to panic. Even when the _Farragut_ had been hijacked by the Augment protesters, he had barely done more than crack a smile upon rescue before barking orders at his crew.

Jim knew how Garrovick compartmentalized because Jim did the same.

So, the fact that Jim could hear the edge of panic in his voice the moment he and Diana stepped onto the bridge did not bode well.

As they stepped out of the briefing room and directly onto the bridge - a minor layout change that Jim desperately wished they had adopted for the _Enterprise_ \- his eyes were drawn immediately to the viewscreen ahead of them. Beside him, Diana also came to a halt, confronted by their enemy before them.

Just as Garrovick had stated, the Romulan warbird was in orbit around the Lunar colony of New Berlin. It hadn't remained cloaked.

"I don't get it, sir," One of the ensigns at helm said, clearly confused. "Why are they showing themselves?"

Unfortunately, Jim already knew why. He had seen the technique before in far too many battles. Didn't matter the century, didn't matter the war.

"Because they want you to watch them, Ensign, and not what else might be happening around them." Jim took the liberty of answering for the _Farragut's_ captain.

Thankfully, Garrovick took it in stride. He turned in his chair to face the two _Enterprise_ crewmembers. "They decloaked this far out. How much you want to bet they've already dropped off their package?"

Diana shook her head, as if quietly chastising them. It was only when he noticed the way her hand was on her lasso that he realized she must have seen something else. "The warbird… I think it's rigged to self-destruct, just like Linvah's ship. You need to get it away from the colony, or all of those people will die."

That was all Jim needed. "Captain, we need to get down to the surface."

Garrovick opened his mouth to protest, but one of the operations officers suddenly interrupted.

"Sir, there's been an explosion reported near the Golden Gate Research Facility. Starfleet personnel were evacuated, but they're reporting buildings levelled." The young officer's voice shook, and it took everything in Jim not to try to captain for the man in the chair. He hated that he couldn't be on his bridge at the moment. But, he knew Spock was probably assessing the situation much the same.

"Put it onscreen, lieutenant." Garrovick barked.

Immediately, the viewscreen flickered away from the warbird, instead providing an aerial view of the North American continent. Magnification kicked in to provide nearly street-level view, but it wasn't exactly high quality footage.

The block was levelled. That had not been hyperbole on the report of the lieutenant. Jim's stomach suddenly had the weight of a cold rock in it and he felt his hand clench into a fist at his side. Had he miscalculated? Was the bomb a literal concussive bomb, not a bioweapon?

Had everyone gotten out?

"I'm detecting one life sign from the epicenter of the explosion." The same ops officer said again.

On the screen, there was a streak of something metallic and grey, but the sensors couldn't keep up.

"Vanessa…" Diana breathed beside him. His heart sank as he realized that she was probably right… If she had been there all that time, blocks away from Starfleet Command…

That was where they needed to be. That was Diana's fight. Their fight. Jim stepped forward, leaning over the railing. "Can you transport us to Earth and lead the warbird away?"

The captain turned towards him, mulling over what he was suggesting before nodding. "Sounds like a plan. We'll hit 'em high…" Garrovick said with a humorless smile.

"We'll hit 'em low." He finished. Jim did nothing more than take Diana by the elbow and steer her back to the transporter room. Just before the doors closed, he turned back and shouted to Garrovick: "Tell the Admiral we know how Cale survived!"

This would end. _Now._

* * *

Diana could still smell the smoke and exhaust, the faint hint of metallic toxic gases and the dust of buildings crumbling in the face of German mortars. Just as London's garbage smell and grey skies had been her first impression of a city, so was the pollutive destruction her first impression of war. True war.

As Jim and Diana beamed down to the surface, the transporter beams swirling around them both before dissipating, she found herself starkly reminded of the No Man's Land. They were in the middle of an intersection, concrete shattered and jaggedly pointing towards the sky. The large transparent aluminum displays had been toppled.

Carnage had come to Earth in its purest form: wanton, mindless destruction.

Diana had to stop it.

Unfortunately, her sword had been dulled with Romulan bones and bulkhead. Her shield had been bolt-scored by disruptor fire.

Diana had already been through one battle. She was absolutely sure the next one would be even less kind.

Yet, there were still blessings among the dust and ozone. Buildings had fallen, but there was not a soul in sight. If there had been Starfleet personnel, they had prioritized the evacuation of the area. But, if anyone had been in the structures levelled by what Diana was _sure_ was Vanessa…

"No lifesigns, but not enough organic tissue to suggest bodies…" Jim had flipped open a tricorder in one hand while he still held his phaser in the other.

They had not spoken since leaving the bridge, except for a brief hail from Jim to make sure the _Enterprise_ helped steer the warbird away from the moon. Yet, again, they were in sync. They had the same priorities, they were thinking as a unit.

"So, then the facility knew to evacuate." Diana didn't bother to hide her relief, yet she hoisted her shield a bit higher on her arm as she scanned the area around them. Jim could use his tools, she would trust her eyes and her heart. "This is most likely coordinated," She hypothesized as the two of them slowly slipped into a position a bit more back to back while they slowly rotated around. "Cale has dispatched the bomb, then released Vanessa to either distract me, the people, or both."

"Then, we need to find the bomb and Vanessa. Disable both of them, and then rub it in Cale's face." Jim was making it sound as if they were reading off a list of chores. The fact that he looked to the great crisis before them as nothing more than a minor inconvenience reminded her that hope was their greatest ally. Jim had it in abundance.

She was about to remark on the subject, a slight moment of levity before they began their search in earnest. The opportunity vanished within moments. She could hear something…

A whirring… a mechanical clicking and whirring.

The sound of an activated Borg drone.

Diana turned to her right. Jim pivoted beside her, beginning to ready his phaser. Quickly, she reached out to keep his arm down. "No. Let me see if I can reason with her. No need to attack her unless she is the aggressor."

The Starro modifications had only grown worse since the video Diana had seen. The plating on her chest reminded her of Vic's, only instead of bright chrome, it was a dark, industrial grey. She didn't know if that was because of the fireball that had consumed part of the facility when she escaped, or if that was how the Starro had adapted to Borg nanotechnology. Her throat was now completely coated, and the cybernetic plating that had snaked down into her mouth before now consumed the bottom half of her jaw.

Vanessa levelled a stony, calculating gaze at Diana. Her one green eye still seemed alert and almost human. But, the ocular implant with a uniquely purple hue - not the green from before - revealed that she was not in control.

Yet… perhaps there was _something_ of her in there.

"Vanessa…" Diana began, lowering her shield and stepping closer. "Sister, please, listen to me." The woman tilted her head, as if considering her queen's words. "You do not need to do this. You do not need to hurt anyone. I know how confusing this is, to not be in control of your own faculties." Diana took another tentative step closer. "But, I will help you. I promise. Vanessa, please - "

Vanessa's head snapped back up and her modified Borg arm lifted to aim for Diana. She opened her mouth, revealing that in the metal, Starro's flesh had dug into the roof of her mouth.

"We are not Vanessa. This designation is unknown to us." When she spoke, the Borg modulation in her voice had only grown more harsh and grating.

Diana's stomach twisted, her heart sank. The Starro had full control of what organic faculties were left… the Borg controlled the other half. And she could only assume that Veronica Cale somehow held the reins to both. "Then what is your designation? Remember, Sister. You are an Amazon. I am your queen." Diana slowly hooked the shield to her backstrap.

Behind her, she heard Jim shift, the phaser back up, trained on the threat. "Diana, not sure that's a good idea - "

"Tell me who you are, Sister. I do not wish to fight you." Diana said firmly, standing straight, arms to her sides as non-threateningly as possible. Perhaps, _perhaps_ , if she just believed, Vanessa would find her way back…

"We are Argentum Cygnus." The black Borg metal suddenly seemed to ripple along her body, then began to shift color. From the dark grey, she was plated in new, gleaming white metal like the bulkheads of the _Enterprise_ , but laced in silver Starro veins.

"Oh shit…" Jim breathed.

Diana was inclined to agree.

"We are Silver Swan." Vanessa said. The weapon where her wrist should have been began to charge. "Your designation is Wonder Woman. Our imperative…" The woman twitched, as if programming had suddenly taken hold of her mind. "Is to terminate you."

The weapon fired, a green disruptor bolt unlike anything she had seen before heading their way.

Time slowed to a crawl as Diana sidestepped away from the disruptor bolt just in time for it to whizz past her. The world came back into startling speed and clarity as the bolt hit a transformer that had not been quite destroyed in the original explosion. Plasma sparks gushed up in a small geyser of excess material and power before it finally shut down.

Jim's phaser pulsed as he sent volley after volley the so-called Silver Swan's way. In return, the Swan launched another series of disruptor bolts at Jim, sensing him as a new threat.

Diana spun around with the grace of the very wind Eutus himself, the east wind that summoned thunderstorms. Her hands moved, bracelets absorbing and deflecting every disruptor bolt meant for Jim's chest.

With the silent tandem rhythm they had shared in the courtyard of Veld, Diana and Jim did their best to defend and strike back.

The Swan had not moved from her position but instead kept firing. Jim returned in kind, and Diana grabbed for her shield so she could finally plant herself like a tree before him and deflect more sustained fire.

Jim used the opportunity to duck behind her, firing over her shoulder back at the woman. "Diana, I hate to say it, but I don't think your friend's at home anymore."

Even over the cacophony of disruptor fire pinging very loudly into her shield near her head, she could hear Jim's words quite clearly. And she had to agree.

"I know," She said with a grunt as the Silver Swan walked closer and closer. The steps were methodical, still like the Borg that Diana had seen in her mind. They felt nothing, so they felt urgency for nothing. "And clearly Cale wishes for me to meet my end at Vanessa's hands. The Starro has fully integrated with her body."

"Think you can get it out of her?" Jim asked, the optimism pleasantly welcome, but unfortunately misplaced.

Diana remembered how it had taken control of Kal-El. But, more importantly, she remembered what had happened to the last two people that the Starro had held under its thrall for far too long. There was a point of no return. She had crossed it. Or rather, Cale had _pushed_ her over it.

"No." Diana simply replied, forcing herself up to a full standing position. As she continued to speak, she knew what needed to be done. "But, I will sing great ballads to her, and she shall dine with Antiope and Hippolyta in the fields of Elysium before I see Cale use her this way." There were more lives at stake. She would not see the Earth fall.

Diana pushed off of the ground, using a godly burst of speed to press the attack. She could not simply defend against the Silver Swan. She had to incapacitate her.

With a great cry of effort and Amazon battle rage, Diana of Themyscira tackled her lost subject, the daughter of Euboea, she who gave her life in battle. She managed to get an arm around her waist and throw her off her feet, using the momentum to knock them into one of the larger collapsed structures. Before the Swan could launch a counter attack, Diana's fists moved.

She leveled punch after punch, blows that had been known to rattle Kal-El's own bones, against Vanessa's body. She tried to focus on her head and chest, hoping that she could disable a Borg implant or, at the least, incapacitate her.

It was not going to be so easy.

The Silver Swan kneed Diana with strength she had not felt since Kryptonians were on the planet. She saw stars for just a moment as her chest suddenly seemed devoid of air. Before she could retaliate, another blow - a solid kick this time - sent Diana careening through the air.

She had just enough time to recognize she was going to hit a hover car before she slammed right into it. Behind her, the metal crunched and moved around her, absorbing as much of the impact as it could. The vehicle slid several meters down the street before it finally came to a halt.

"Diana!" Momentarily dazed, she furrowed her brow and tried to sit up. Jim was shouting her name, same as he had in the trenches, almost making her wonder if she had gone back to those days.

She looked up at the sky, trying to focus on the coming sunset. She could see a few stars peeking out amongst the purple haze now.

Then she saw a shuttle streak through the sky, a vessel large enough to house ten, twenty people. _Innocent_ people. And while they may never have seen Diana's face… they needed her help.

She was in San Francisco. She was in Man's World. And she would protect it.

Diana pulled herself out of the car, then leapt into the air until she could find a vantage point to hover in. Jim was below her, staring up in clear incredulity. Even though he had been a passenger in one of her flights, it seemed he still wasn't used to it.

The Silver Swan was clearly about to use that distraction to her advantage. Diana could see her marching towards Jim, arm cannon outstretched.

" _Vanessa!_ " Diana bellowed, hands clenched into fists as she remained in the air, hoping she could both play to whatever might have been left to respond to that name and to distract from Jim. If she was the primary target, she would keep the Swan focused on that. "If you wish to terminate me, then you have underestimated your capabilities. I am the Champion of Themsycira and your Queen. And you will not commit any more bloodshed. In Cale's name or anyone else's!"

The Silver Swan turned to look at Diana, lowering her arm for the moment. "Our objective is absolute. We will terminate the Wonder Woman."

"I'd love to see you try, seeing as how she can literally fly circles around you." Jim said as he sidestepped over to another car for cover.

The Silver Swan looked to Diana, then looked to herself. It was as if she was analyzing her own physical body, looking from side to side before her head twitched again.

"We will… _adapt._ " The Swan simply replied.

But, there was nothing simple in what came next.

Diana found herself sinking a bit lower in the air as Vanessa began to… change. Again.

After a moment of clicking, four panels suddenly built themselves out of her chrome-plated back. They grew almost organically until they were easily the length of each of her arms with an impressive width and span.

They looked like the arms of the Starro.

And then she activated them. They began to flap, then pulsed with some sort of repulsor engine that had been built into them.

They were not arms. They were _wings._

The Silver Swan had taken flight.

* * *

Spock was not prone to bouts of hubris or pride. But, on the rare occasion that he did so, he would often take pride that little ever gave him cause for true concern when it came to Jim's propensity to disobey Starfleet. Even during the more unusual opportunity for Spock to play a part in the subterfuge, he had felt reasonably certain that they could achieve the desired goal.

With Lieutenant Chekov now aboard the _Enterprise_ to assist Chief Engineer Scott and Ensign Jaylah in locating the holographic weapon, success seemed certain, if not in clear view. With the two Federation vessels approaching Earth at impulse power by way of Saturn, it was only logical that they would find the solution.

Of course, logic had been somewhat… difficult to return to. Spock had found that after his experience on the warbird, regaining full control of his emotional impulses would prove challenging. The Romulan commander had not hidden her interest in him. In order to gain the intelligence that would be most useful, he had "played" along.

It had meant straying towards the more human side he possessed, and that side was normally reserved for Nyota. The unusual experience of essentially stretching the mental process of the mind meld through the lasso had allowed him to ground himself in the familiarity of his partner, but while he had been honest with her in those few moments, they had not discussed them further.

Spock turned to face her at her station, prepared to ask for a moment of her time, when he caught her expression suddenly grow dark with worry. His eyebrow quirked in curiosity and his own carefully hidden concern.

"Commander," Uhura turned to face him, her hand pressed to her earpiece. "We're being hailed by the _Farragut_."

"Onscreen," Spock ordered, pivoting to face the viewscreen and rising to greet the captain that appeared onscreen.

Captain Garrovick's voice conveyed a sense of urgency that belied panic. " _Commander, there's a warbird in orbit around Luna."_

Spock's brow furrowed and he clasped his hands behind his back as he stood more attention. "Have they attacked?" He cast a questioning glance at Lieutenant Sulu, who silently nodded and pointed to the warbird visible on their sensor array.

" _No."_ Garrovick shook his head fervently. " _Based on the behavior of the last warbird, Ambassador Prince thinks they may be in a self-destruct cycle. We need to lure them away from the moon."_

"Where are Captain Kirk and the Ambassador?" Their absence from the bridge did not bode well for their very serious accusations. With Chekov's very limited briefing, Spock was not entirely sure what had transpired.

" _Your Captain and Ambassador Prince are beaming down to Earth to investigate an explosion. They believe - and I'm inclined to agree - that Admiral Veronica Cale is responsible for all of this. Admiral Kent's trying to reach the admiralty board, but we have to get that warbird out of the danger zone."_

Spock nodded, immediately considering the multiple scenarios by which they could accomplish the task. "Understood, Captain." He turned towards the ops station. "Red alert, all hands to battle stations. Power phasers and target non-essential systems on the warbird." He glanced back at the viewscreen. "Lieutenant Uhura will relay any necessary instructions, but I recommend we attempt to 'wrangle' the vessel. If they refuse to move, I believe we may need to resort to a tractor beam."

" _Agreed. Just tell me what you need._ Farragut _out._ " The image of the other vessel's bridge disappeared. As the _Enterprise_ came about to face the moon, the Romulan warbird came into clear view.

It seemed to be completely dead in space.

"Status report on that ship, crewman." Spock requested of the ops technician standing beside him.

Crewman Acosta replied with a steady hand and voice - a marked improvement since Sulu's last report on his performance in orbit around Delphi. "Propulsion isn't powered, weapons aren't powered, no shields."

"Lifesigns?"

Acosta's fingers flew across the console for a moment. When he replied, he was slightly ashen. "... None, sir."

The vessel was derelict. It could not have made its way all the way to Sector 001 without a crew. Which meant…

"Lieutenant Uhura, contact New Berlin Lunar Colony," Spock ordered, mind racing as he attempted to deduce the Romulan strategy before they could complete their mission. "Have them retrieve all sensor data relating to transporter signals in Earth orbit in the last twenty-four hours." He turned to face her. "There are Tal Shiar on Earth, most likely to secure the bomb's success. We must determine their location."

Making his way back to the chair as Uhura set to her task, Spock flipped the control for an internal hail to Engineering. "Mister Scott, I require all available power to forward shields and the tractor beam."

Chief Scott's emotional response was so routine, it did not phase Spock. _"Aye, sir, but what in the hell are ye plannin' to do? Tractor a bomb off the planet?"_

"No, Mister Scott." Spock simply replied, then made his way to his customary science station so he could take control of the tractor controls. "A D7-class vessel."

The necessary calculations to successfully lock onto a former Klingon vessel with no powered systems would be too complex for even the most capable crewman. They did not know the hull polarization levels, as they had not been privy to the same records Spock had. Without looking up from his console, he powered up the tractor beam.

"Lieutenant Sulu," He ordered, still focused on the mathematical equations before him. "Turn the ship about to heading 223-mark-49."

"Aye, sir," Sulu replied. Given the trepidation in his tone, it was clear that he had recognized the heading would put them on a head-on course.

Calculations were complete. "I am activating the tractor beam… now…"

He turned to face the viewport, as did Nyota beside him. The beam flickered into life before them, wrapping around the vessel. After a glance back at his console, Spock stood and motioned for the crewman he had relieved to return to the station.

"Lieutenant Uhura, tell Captain Garrovick to use the polarization algorithm I have just used and to repulse with their own tractor beam." Spock made his way back to the captain's chair. "And I suggest he hurry."

* * *

Jim would have been proud, had he known that the explosion in the sky above them, too big to be a satellite, too small to be a star, had been his first officer's successful work.

Unfortunately, his mind was on other things.

Mainly, the Borg drone-turned-mad-science experiment…. That could fly.

And considering it had happened after Jim had goaded the seemingly grounded woman on… he felt like he was partially to blame.

"Ah, great…" He hissed as he flipped the dial on his phaser from blue to red. If the Silver Swan - as she wanted to style herself - could fly, then all bets were off. There was no way where that would end up positively for anyone involved.

As Jim caught sight of the clearly shocked expression on Diana's face, he could only think to mutter, "Sorry, angel, that one's on me…"

As the Swan lifted herself into the air, he took aim for the newfound wings. Maybe he could end things before they escalated.

He fired several shots off, enjoying the satisfying peal of energy as the small phaser bolts went right for their target.

Unfortunately, they didn't seem to connect. Jim stood straighter, mortified, as he watched his phaser bolts connect with some sort of strange personal force field. It flickered purple like her ocular implant, then dissipated. It was as if he had never fired at all.

Well, physically.

The Silver Swan _absolutely_ realized that he had fired.

"You are irrelevant." The Swan intoned, aiming her arm cannon at him again. "You will not longer distract us from our imperative."

Jim braced himself, expecting the disruptor bolt to come his way. He didn't have enough time to do more than hope the car would be enough cover, or that Diana could somehow make it his way.

But, the Silver Swan had begun to _learn_. And instead of firing at Jim, she quickly rose her arm and fired on the very large transparent aluminum display hanging off of one of the wrecked buildings just behind him.

Jim began to dive for cover, but knew that the oval structure was several meters long and wide. Even if he could get around the car, he would most assuredly get cut to ribbons by shattered glass or aluminum shards.

The air crackled around him as Diana suddenly seemed to beat him to his point of cover. Her feet alighted just as she had time to grab him by the uniform and throw him to the ground.

And then she was holding up the entire display, standing above him and reminding him, not for the first time, that she would always be his guardian angel. That didn't mean it would be easy.

The aluminum structure would have been heavy enough, but the building kept coming down around them. Diana grunted with the effort as she held the display up with tons of concrete and plexisteel dropping on them. Her foot shifted, then dented the concrete beneath her as she kept her position.

More concrete fell. Diana began to sink to her knees. The concrete began to roll off the display all around them, building up a small barrier between them and the Swan. But, Diana was having trouble keeping it up.

Jim had seen her flip tanks, hold back Romulan warbirds. She could do anything. This was nothing.

His damn communicator chirped in his pocket. Jim scrambled for it, heart jumping to his throat as he was very suddenly reminded that the bomb was still out there, and he wasn't sure if that explosion had been the warbird or his own ship.

"Kirk here!" He barked as another half-ton block of concrete slid off the display. A disruptor bolt from outside the makeshift barrier sent another piece of debris flying.

" _Ceyptin!"_

Kirk instantly laughed, unable to contain his relief at the very optimistic and familiar voice. "Mister Chekov, I take it you made it to the _Enterprise!_ Please tell me you have good news!"

" _Da, sir! Ze warbird self-destructed after we pulled zem away from ze Lunar station. I am here vis Mister Scott and Jaylah. We sink zere is a way to isolate ze bomb's holographic signal."_

Kirk nodded some, but his mirth was slightly dampened by Diana buckling again, her arms bending a bit more. "Great, then you know where it is?"

" _Eh, not exactly. Zere needs to be someone on ze surface to track ze device."_

Another voice cut in, one he knew all too well. Jaylah. _"I will be down there shortly, James T! I know these types of traps, but the more the better. And whatever you are doing on the planet, it is making it harder to read my signals."_

Jim rolled onto his stomach as he saw another disruptor bolt go flying. "We're working on it! Just get out here! Take everyone you need, I don't care if the whole senior staff is combing every inch of the place, just find the bomb! Kirk out!" He clapped the communicator shut as the Silver Swan's arm suddenly slammed through a gap in the concrete. She started to pry at the makeshift barrier.

Jim turned back to Diana, who was still clearly struggling.

"Come on, angel," He said, encouraging her as he got to his hands and knees. He knew she could do it. She just had to be out of practice. But, she would be facing down another god-like creature today. She _had_ to do it.

Jim scrambled out of the way just as another disruptor bolt hit the car just where he'd been sitting moments ago.

He wasn't sure what precisely did the trick, but the near-miss seemed to work. Diana managed to brace herself and finally get back to her feet. With a great cry of effort, she threw the display and remaining concrete down the street. It crashed with a thunderous rumble.

"I'd offer to fire at her, but that seems to be a bust." Jim said, turning to face the Silver Swan as another block of concrete was ripped from the barricade.

Diana shifted to face him. He noticed just moments before she turned, and he moved to meet her gaze.

"I will handle the Silver Swan." Diana's voice shook just a bit. He could tell it hurt her, but that she was willing to fight. "Go. Help them find the bomb. Cale won't detonate it herself, but she won't leave it up to chance. You _need_ to find it, and any of her accomplices."

She was passing the baton to him.

They both knew he was no good in this fight.

Without thinking, even though he knew it was the worst time to do so, that there was literally death on the other side of that barricade, he stepped closer and slipped his hands to her face.

She drew him closer, lips meeting his tenderly even in the face of danger. It wasn't a goodbye.

It was good luck.

When he finally pulled back to breathe, he held her close, jaw set. "Do whatever you have to do. I know you will."

Diana nodded, brushing her hand down his cheek. "I know you will, too."

Jim pulled back as the last of the concrete barrier was knocked away.

Diana pulled her sword and shield, huffing angrily as she turned to the Silver Swan. It was clear from her expression that the last thing she wanted to do was fight her… but they both knew it had to be done.

Jim had to find the bomb. He had to stop this madness before Cale could get any further.

They would do this. Together.

No matter the cost.


	54. To Save the World, Part 1: Act III

**To Save the World, Part 1: Act III**

The sky had begun to grow darker over the streets of San Francisco. The last of the orange sunset had begun to fade into the darker purples, and soon, night would fall completely.

But, she couldn't think of whether or not that would make it more difficult for the _Enterprise_ crew - for Jim - to find the holographically concealed bomb. She could only think of the enemy before her.

A scholar, one of her own people. Sister against sister…

She could not save Barbara Ann from becoming the Cheetah. She did not think she could save Vanessa from the Silver Swan. Would those she loved forever be doomed to walk amongst the realm of the damned? Did Hades taunt her? Or did he pity her as Diana of Themyscira, sister of the fallen, forever watching those she loved consumed by their darkest impulses?

With Jim gone, Diana had little time to wonder. He was saving the rest of the planet from Cale's machinations, but he could not stop the Silver Swan, the abomination of Darkseid's Apokoliptian technology and Starro's genetics.

Only she could.

The Silver Swan had finally throw the last of the debris away, clearing a path between them. Her strength was impressive. From the best she could tell, it was not on par with hers, but she was more than a match for someone without increased strength. The Borg implants and augmentation had clearly taken _this_ time.

"We will terminate the Wonder Woman." The Silver Swan intoned, raising her arm cannon again.

Diana's shield was at the ready, and she easily knocked the disruptor bolt away with the same efficiency she had deflected mortar shells and bullets. "Just because you can aim does not mean you are capable of besting me." She said, both warning and taunt.

She did not wish to fight her. But, the Swan had already tried to kill Jim, kill _her._ There was no suggestion she could reason with her.

"We will adapt." The Silver Swan repeated her remark from earlier. Diana shifted, locking into a lunge in anticipation of another disruptor bolt.

But, it never came.

Instead, the arm cannon suddenly went wild, as if her arm had suddenly spasmed. In horror, Diana could only watch as Vanessa's head jerked suddenly towards her shoulder and the Borg limb began to redesign itself. The white metal opened along her arm, then began to knit itself back together.

A metallic screech, somewhere between a noise given by computers experiencing critical errors and a scream, ripped from the Swan's throat as the arm remade itself.

Diana's foot dug into the broken concrete beneath her a bit more. "Vanessa, please stop this madness…" She muttered behind her shield, as if she could will the woman's humanity back to her.

The plea fell on deaf ears. The Silver Swan straightened.

"We are Silver Swan." She stated. Her ocular implant began to shine it's brilliant purple before going dark for a moment.

An Omega symbol burned itself onto Vanessa's forehead, as if it had charred its way from the inside out. The great burden of Darkseid, the scourge that had corrupted good men into parademons. Her suspicions had been confirmed. The Borg were the evolution of Darkseid's quest. Whether he had lived or died through their many battles with the League, his legacy had now burned across the galaxy.

"The Anti-Life Equation…" Diana breathed, horrified. "I am so sorry, sister... " There would be no way she could recover her mind. The darkness within her soul had been twisted and molded, now given to the force that fueled the Borg.

The Swan swung a much improved arm cannon around and fired.

Instead of a round disruptor bolt, sustained phaser fire burst forth from it. Diana gripped her shield and held tight, bracing herself from the blow. Forced back several meters, the concrete at her feet gave in jagged shards as she tore up an ugly gully in the middle of the street. On her arm, the shield grew warmer against the skin of her arm. Yet, the phaser fire kept coming.

Diana rolled out of the way, allowing the phaser fire to obliterate a vehicle behind her. The move had confused the Swan - or more accurately, probably her targeting sensors - and the fire stopped for a moment.

Diana grabbed for a bench bolted into the sidewalk and yanked it free. Without hesitation, she hurled it with one hand at Vanessa, ignoring the way her body protested. She was quickly on the way to exhausting herself, although she couldn't understand why.

It was almost as if being around the Swan was… draining her somehow. But, perhaps it was not Vanessa. Perhaps it was Darkseid's plague of hopelessness...

"Recalibrating…" The Swan said before turning and firing another sustained blast.

Diana caught it with the shield, but against found herself pushed back from the force. This time, she was able to catch her footing as she reached a curb, then roared as she took a step forward to brace herself.

Diana's arm was burning from the heat of the shield as it took the phaser fire. It was more than Kal's heat vision, more than Victor's pulse cannons… it was on part with warp plasma, as if belched from the sun itself. She groaned as her flesh began to sizzle, the shield beginning to overheat.

Her holy shield was divine, but not invincible. Diana would need to change the strategy.

She rolled again, then hurled her shield towards the Swan, hoping that the blow would connect. Unfortunately, the Borg repulsor technology she possessed allowed for more agile flight than she was expecting.

The Silver Swan launched herself into the air as Diana's shield lodged more than halfway into one of the metal walls of a more recent building. With the block leveled, smoke and fire from the collateral damage growing, it was becoming increasingly clear that without intervention, there would be nothing but havoc and death in the Swan's wake.

The Swan seemed to recognize the same in Diana. She tilted her head, clearly observing the other woman, before she turned her head and looked off towards the the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance… precisely where people would be evacuating _to_ in order to escape.

She had clearly gauged Diana's desire to protect others and determined she could use it. The repulsors began to glow a brighter purple as she lifted herself higher in the air.

"Vanessa, _no!_ "

The Swan shot off like a bullet, off between high rise buildings towards what was most likely a cluster of lifesigns.

Diana braced herself on the ground, then pushed off with ease. The force she needed to fly always seemed insignificant to bystanders, because she made it seem so effortless. But, there was far more effort than she wanted to admit tonight. Her energy was waning, but she had to keep up.

As if they were two fighter jets in a dogfight, the Silver Swan soared in between buildings as Diana flew after her, arms at her sides to reduce wind shear and increase speed. She wasn't the Flash, but she could be fast _enough_.

Her enemy banked heavily to the right as she realized she was being followed, and Diana narrowly managed to avoid a window-washing hover platform against a building. For a moment, it seemed that Vanessa would lead them on a labyrinthine chase throughout San Francisco's skyline. If she could keep her between buildings, it was possible she could outfly her...

Diana caught sight of a shuttle of evacuating citizens at the same time that the Swan did. They were clearly trying to lift people out of danger from their vehicles clogged on the roads. Even with impulse and hover technology, they still travelled in lanes of traffic close to the roads, and the police were desperately trying to evacuate as fast as the danger approached.

Yet, she was here. They had not been fast enough. The Swan dove for them, arm outstretched as she went to take out the unsuspecting citizens.

Diana let instinct take over. She reached for the lasso, throwing out as far as she could until it just barely managed to wrap around the Swan's ankle. Diana shot upward, hands gripping the lasso tightly as she struggled to delay her from getting any further.

Diana landed on the top of one building with the grace of an eagle, then braced herself against the building. With a cry of effort, she wound the lasso around her hand for extra grip and tugged. The Silver Swan's repulsors tried to compensate but couldn't. Ungracefully, she fishtailed as Diana managed to yank her off-course enough that her one shot went wild.

The shuttle banked out of the way.

Diana looped the lasso around her arm again, then heaved another scream of brutal strength as she drew the Swan closer, preventing her from reaching civilians.

She barely had time to see the arm cannon aim for the very building Diana was bracing against.

" _NO!"_

Diana leapt off the building, lasso still in hand, as she used terminal velocity to beat the phaser burst as she aimed and fired.

She deflected the blow with a clash of her bracelets, but not before it slammed her into one of the aluminum windows. Somehow, she managed to pivot just in time so as not to break the panel.

In the sudden slack from Diana's jump, the Swan shot forward towards the building across from them, carried by momentum from the sudden release. .

Diana could see the faces of the people still trapped in that building. They had thought the evacuation zone was far enough… how could they know that the battle would carry here?

Diana tugged the lasso again, then flew downward to meet the Swan and wrap her arms around her, pinning the arm cannon to her side.

The battle _could_ not be here. If they couldn't keep it to the research facility, Diana would have to determine a suitable location. Her heart had to guide her.

"Release us!" The Silver Swan screamed, but Diana refused to relent in her vice-like grip.

Diana shot upwards, sending them both high into the air until she could pivot back towards Starfleet Command. It was supposed to be evacuated. That would work.

The wind whipped past them as the Swan tried to break free. The two of them corkscrewed in the air as her human arm - or what was left of it - wriggled out of Diana's gasp and reached for her.

Vanessa's hand - only possessing two fingers and three sharp implements - grappled blindly against Diana's cheek. She dug into flesh, leaving deep gashes that immediately felt wet and warm, but it wasn't enough to make Diana release her grip. She was more steadfast than her brother Heracles.

She would know, she had fought him, too.

Was she forever destined now to fight _against_ her family?

The lasso was still in her hand, shining brightly as she tried to pull her away. Diana gripped it tighter, trying to will the magical relic to work for her. The lasso uncoiled itself from the Swan's foot, then snaked around her wrist and yanked the metal hand away.

In that moment, the lasso touched flesh.

 _ **I'm in here!**_

The voice was a primal scream, one that Diana had heard too many times before.

 _ **DIANA!**_

Vanessa's voice ripped through Diana's senses so brutally that she released the grip on the Swan.

In mid-air, the Silver Swan whirled around in her position and gripped Diana by her throat, halting them in the main courtyard of Starfleet Headquarters.

"We will… terminate… you." The Silver Swan said as her arm cannon began to shift and change again. This time, a morbid facsimile of an arm, complete with claw-like fingers and hand, appeared. She raised the hand to Diana's neck. "We will fulfill our. - "

 _ **MAKE IT STOP!**_

The scream tore through her faculties again. Vanessa was begging for… for help. For release, for something, she didn't know.

But, no matter what Vanessa's mind begged through the lasso's connection, Diana recognized that the _Swan_ was trying to inject her with nanoprobes. With a grunt, she grabbed her sword from its sheath and dislodged the hand right from her completely Borg arm.

The Silver Swan screamed that same metallic screech, only this time, it grew even louder. The sound continued to grow more intense until it was a sonic cacophony, pummelling through Diana's senses so painfully that even divine stamina could not hold back the assault.

The Swan held Diana tight with the uninjured hand, screaming into her face.

Diana did the only thing she could.

She shoved the sword deep into the Silver Swan's belly until she released her. Vanessa's hand loosened, but the sonic cry threw Diana back.

For a brief moment, she thought she saw the Omega symbol flicker away…

And then Diana hit the side of a building so hard the plexisteel gave.

* * *

While Diana had been solely focused on the Silver Swan, Jim had done his best to get out of the line of fire and to coordinate with his crew. After a quick hail, Jaylah confirmed that she, Scotty and Chekov had all beamed to the surface in downtown San Francisco.

Based on the radius extrapolated from their work to isolate the type of photonic signature that Jaylah's holographic designs emitted, they felt they had a fairly solid idea of where it was. Of course, knowing roughly where something was in an area the size of a small suburb did them very little good if they couldn't narrow it down.

The expected location was somewhere around the Federation headquarters and Starfleet Command. As they were the two most vital organizations on Earth, they were conveniently located near to each other. Unfortunately, without knowing the potential yield of the weapon Cale's Romulan allies had crafted, they had no way of knowing precisely how many people could be affected by Medusa's curse.

Curse...

If he could go back and tell himself of a year ago that he'd be calling a nearly-impossible organic poison a "curse" out of both ease of identification and... because he actually kind of believed that it _was_ , he would have said he was insane. Yet, the fact was: magic was just science that they couldn't understand yet. Bones had only barely begun to scratch the surface of everything Diana's body could do, and what the Medusa curse or organism or poison (whatever he landed on one day) was capable of.

Times had changed. Jim had changed.

He had Diana to thank for that.

As Jim sprinted down the streets of San Francisco, looking for a convenient method of travel in the midst of abandoned vehicles, he heard the sudden crack in the air as the Silver Swan streaked overhead. He whipped his head up to watch as the gleaming white and silver abomination tore around buildings. Another crack followed as he caught the red and blue of Diana's armor, along with the gleaming golden shine of the lasso of Hestia.

Silver Swan had taken the fight on the move.

The longer they waited to disarm the bomb, the more time the Silver Swan had to wreak havoc if Diana couldn't hold her back.

But, she would. Jim refused to believe that anything could ever take Diana down. She wouldn't stop until Vanessa was no longer a threat.

That was a fact Cale had to be counting on...

Jim's communicator chirped after a moment. Scanning the area around him, still looking for a way to get across several blocks without his lungs burning, he backpedaled off the street and flipped his communicator open. "Kirk here."

" _James T!_ " Jaylah exclaimed his name as if it was both curse and blessing. He couldn't quite tell how she was feeling, and he hoped it was less dire than it seemed.

"Jaylah, please tell me you found the bomb. Or something." Jim made his way over to a side street, peeking down the alley way. "I'm stuck two miles away from Starfleet Command, so my best estimates put me there in maybe 15 minutes. Less, if I can find something a bit better than my own two feet."

For a brief moment, he had hoped for some rebuttal indicating that the metaphor had gone past her. Unfortunately, the fact that she simply continued on, undaunted, only lent credence to the notion that things were only getting worse.

" _It is in Federation Headquarters - the main Assembly building._ " No sooner than the words left Jaylah's mouth, Jim closed his eyes and bit back a curse. If they hadn't found out about it sooner... if the delegates had convened in the morning as they planned...

"That area's evacuated, right?" Jim tried to remind himself of what they could - and hopefully had - controlled.

" _Yes_." Jaylah sounded just as relieved as he felt. For a moment, he could let himself relax. At least there were no civilians, and hopefully no lingering Starfleet security officers. " _But, the room is locked_."

"The room..." Jim echoed, momentarily perplexed. Then, it struck him. "You're not _in the building_ , are you?"

" _We tracked the signal to the General Assembly, but the photons are too close to find where._ " It took him a moment to realize that the Romulans had succeeded where Jaylah had, and with aplomb. Photons were densely packed enough that while it gave off a signature, it was impossible to tell if it was a chair or the weapon unless they could get right on it.

That meant three of his closest friends would be right at ground zero. "Negative, I want you out of there, Jaylah! That's an order! Wait for me to get there and I'll go in - "

" _No, James T! There is no time._ " Over the comm line, he heard the sound of a phaser on low beam. Someone - probably Scotty - was cutting through the doors to get into the assembly. That could easily backfire. " _That is not the danger! The detonator is._ "

Jim started to jog again, heading towards Federation Headquarters - lungs be damned. "What about it? You're that close to the damn thing, it's gotta be on a timer -"

" _No, I do not think so. Unless it is old, mechanical. With the amount of power needed to create a hologram and the projected size of the hologram, it is not possible to power anything else in there._ "

"So, it's using minimal power, no more than a communicator…" Jim frowned. He knew that Cale was old-fashioned, but the Romulans weren't. And what was it Diana had said?... Cale would want to know it was happening, but she wouldn't want to be right there. She'd want someone else to get their hands dirty. "You think it's a remote detonator? Could it get through the photonic interference?"

" _Maybe. But, if they made the weapon and armed it, there is a way for someone to deactivate the hologram._ " There was a metallic thud as they must have finished cutting through bulkhead. He heard Scotty order them into the room, and Jaylah's voice changed to reflect the cavernous General Assembly chamber. _"We are looking, hold on."_

Jim pushed himself harder, making his way to the bottom of a hill before he finally slowed to a halt. Panting, he found himself staring at an even more daunting slope to make his way up to the headquarters. The _Enterprise_ would be in no position to help with a transport nor would Jim ask for it.

Pivoting, he circled idly as he scanned the crowded streets again. When they had evacuated, Starfleet hadn't left anyone behind, and it looked like they'd picked people up in shuttles.

In the distance, he heard an explosion, then another.

They were fighting. She was getting tired. _How do I know that?_

"Diana…" he breathed, turning towards the Golden Gate bridge. He couldn't see anything, but somehow… he _knew_.

" _Cap'n!"_ Scotty's voice cut through the emotional stupor and refocused him. Diana could take of herself. Right now, she _had_ to.

"Talk to me, Mister Scott," Jim said in his patented blend of authoritative, urgent and casual. As he circled again, his gaze fell on _exactly_ what he needed. "What's the situation?"

" _We found the holographic device. Murderous buggers were clever, it looks like the Head Councilwoman's podium stand."_ Scotty's voice was full of gravel and dark concern. Knowing his engineer, he was trying to describe the possible scenario while trying not to visualize it. Jim couldn't blame him. _"She would've stepped on it in the morning and… well, turned to stone. Probably along with everyone else in the room."_

Jim wanted to remind Scotty that they'd gotten to the hard part. They'd found the bomb. But, he knew they weren't out of the woods and he needed more than a pat on the back. "You found it, Mister Scott, so no one has to go through that. Can you move it?"

" _We're workin' on it. Jaylah and Chekov are tryin' to figure out how to turn off the projection."_

Jim came around to the vehicle he'd spotted. A hoverbike, standard issue and slimmer than the normal police models used these days, had been left on its chain outside a cafe. The owner had probably been evacuated from the building and told to leave it behind. The chain was decent enough for common theft, but for a Federation phaser…

"I'll be there shortly." Jim said as he phasered the chain off and pulled the bike over onto the road before straddling it. A couple of seconds of messing with the controls, touching the right buttons in the right order and he kicked in the manufacturer's override start up.

" _No offense, Jim, but I dinnae think ye'll be any good here. This hologram… it's not quite what we thought it was."_

Jim's confusion was plain, even if no one was around to see it. "The hell is that supposed to mean?"

" _Jaylah, lass, explain to Jim."_ WIthout any hesitation, Jim's senior engineer clearly handed his communicator over to Jaylah. Or maybe he'd only been borrowing hers for the moment. Either way, the captain was suddenly speaking to a different crewmember.

" _Captain - "_ She began.

"Oh, shit…" He swore under his breath. If she was using rank...

" _This is my design, but these are not my subroutines. I do not know how to stop it, how to turn off the hologram."_ Jim scowled. The Romulans hadn't had the technology for _that_ long. If Jaylah had only _just_ gotten it working on a grand scale, how could they learn to outcode her? _"It moves too fast. It adapts like a_ _ **urazi**_ _when I try to touch it."_

" _It's adapting organically, ceptyin."_ Chekov remarked, probably still working beside her. _"Zere is no way to know how it vill move next. Subroutines follow patterns and zese..."_

"They don't. They adapt, like someone else was out-thinking you." The realization struck Jim with such clarity, he was honestly surprised with himself. He could be impressed later, though. "I know what you're up against, and you're not going to be able to outcode her."

" _Her?"_ Jaylah and Chekov echoed simultaneously.

Jim could still see the woman's face in the grainy footage. "Anderson. Her name's Anderson. At least, that's what she used to be called. Diana said she was going by Doctor Cyber." He revved the bike and began to speed up the next hill, weaving around abandoned cars. As he did so, he shouted over the wind shear in the hopes that they could still hear him. "Scotty, I need you to find Adrianna Anderson! I don't care how, but she's gotta be in Starfleet's records! She's the key, _she's_ going to _be_ the detonator!"

" _Aye, and if I find her?"_

"You give me her coordinates when I get to you!"

" _No, Jim - "_

"Objection noted!"

Jim caught sight of a blocked road and quickly hitched the bike up to jump one of the cars. As he came back down, he suddenly caught sight of Diana and the Swan heading towards Starfleet Command.

"And Scotty, I need you to get proximity monitors online," He said, all too aware that they were now fighting only a block away from his crew - and the bomb. "If Diana's not careful, you might get some incoming traffic."

* * *

There were sparks.

For a brief moment, they were flashes of flint against stone, casting a shower over dry brush to raise the fires in the sacred temple of Artemis.

Another shower, amber flicks burning through the darkness over her head. Her sharpening stone running across the length of her blade, the sword of Athena.

FIRE SUPPRESSION SYSTEMS ONLINE.

The echoing, monotone voice of the building's computer system brought Diana's surroundings back into focus around her. Conjured images of Themyscira, of her days training upon the very grass that Demeter herself had blessed, vanished as she tried to pick herself up.

In the wake of the Swan's sonic cry, Diana had been thrown clear through half of the building, crashing through an admiral's window before blowing the doors off its hinges.

She wasn't entirely sure how she had ended up halfway embedded into a console in a hallway, but the gaping maw where she'd punched through bulkhead like a bullet gave her an indication.

Groaning, she pulled herself up, slowly extricating herself from the folded metal around her. Her gut swam with a wave of nausea so intense that she found herself clamping her mouth shut, determined not to lose the limited contents of her stomach. Teetering, she finally made it to her feet, bending over the console a bit as she waited for sickness and disorientation to abate. She couldn't recall feeling as weak as she did in a long time. Probably not since her days fighting Darkseid, surrounded by the Apokaliptian wasteland as Granny Goodness tried to pry open her mind.

Diana had fought countless rogues and villains. She'd taken hits from Ares to Circe to the Cheetah. Yet, the Silver Swan was somehow different. She was made of the New Gods of Apokolips and the ancient Starro entity. She was something new and yet profoundly old, and Diana felt _weak_ around her.

As she turned to slowly cross the distance of the hallway, back towards where she'd last fought Swan, she reached up to wipe something warm from her face. It was only when her hand came back slick and crimson that she realized that she had not _healed_ from the encounter.

Even the New Gods could not have killed Diana. This was _more_.

The thought turned her stomach the same as if she'd been struck with another ear-splitting cry.

Idly, the Amazon reached for her sword, only for remember that it was - if she was fortunate - still lodged in the Swan's side. If not, it was somewhere on the grounds below, staining the grass.

Just as well. The sword would not kill her. It would only slow her down. And Vanessa did not need to be slowed down. She needed to be stopped.

As she made her way back to the windows at the end of the hall, she spied the silhouette of the Silver Swan as she flew along the grounds and around the building. She was circling, looking for her prey.

And yet, Vanessa's screams for help could not go unheeded.

Over 80% of her body now belonged to the Starro and the Borg.

She was barely holding on, reaching out to Diana in the most pure way she could: the truth. Vanessa was still inside the Silver Swan, and she wanted the suffering to stop.

"Phoebus Apollo..." Diana breathed as the Swan circled once more. She gripped the lasso tightly, feeling its warmth in her hand as comforting as it was dangerous. "Bringer of Light, Seeker of Truth... Guide my hand, brother. Show me how to wield Hestia's gift." She carefully unhooked the lasso, watching the Swan's circling, silently counting the seconds between rounds. As she steadied her nerve and her muscles, Diana clenched her fists.

 _If the gods hear no other prayer, let it be this one._ She fervently thought, tears of pity, of remorse, of love, warming her eyes as they fluttered closed.

"Athena, promise me she will be welcomed at the hearth of Olympus. She deserves such an honor." With every fiber of her being, with every beat of her heart, Diana longed for Athena as she had every day on Themyscira. Not for herself, not for guidance. But, for Vanessa. For her sister's rightful place as a hero amongst the gods, a scholar and explorer. No hubris had driven Vanessa to the stars. Only hope.

And hope was all that mattered.

The Swan's repulsors screamed past her one last time and Diana snapped her eyes open. Her grip tightened on the lasso as her mind calculated the perfect moment for the final movement in their dance.

Vanessa would not be lost to Tartarus today. She would not become Darkseid's pawn in his never ending war.

She would be free.

The Swan was coming around again. Diana forced the last of her strength to her legs and she leapt forward, bracelets crashing together just in time to shatter the plexisteel windows before her.

The metal showered over the Silver Swan, a clear distraction for Diana's real gambit.

Diana's arm swung wide. The lasso followed.

This time, it lashed around the Swan's waist, catching one of her arms but unfortunately missing her wings. The repulsors fired as the two of them swung wildly in mid-air. Without intending to, Diana dropped out of the sky, pulling the Swan with her.

The closer she was to the Swan, the more ill she felt.

But, if she could ground her...

Using her sudden drop in altitude, Diana forced gravity to help her. She tugged the Swan after her towards the ground until the two of them came crashing into the dirt. Diana's feet buried a few inches into the soft earth. The Silver Swan's repulsors on her feet scorched the very grass to char.

"Vanessa, this ends today. I promise you," Diana held the lasso fast, hoping she could somehow reach out to her. She had no way of knowing if the girl beneath the machine could hear her anymore. "I will not let you go down this path until it consumes you."

The Silver Swan opened her mouth, screeching again with that earth shattering force.

Diana cried out, skull splitting as she found herself even more sensitive to the sonic frequencies than before. Trying to avoid further injury, Diana dropped to her knees and grabbed for anything that could help her.

When her fingers brushed the hilt of her sword, somehow within reach, she felt the pulse of power within the blade.

Had Athena heard her prayers after all?

Gripping it tightly, Diana hurled it at the Silver Swan as she continued her weaponized scream. The sword's aim was true. It lodged into an implant port at her shoulder, nearly hilt-deep. The blade's tip jutted out the other side and the Swan's arm - the one equipped with the cannon - went limp.

She had managed to cut off access to her limb.

Diana pressed the advantage. She could not truly free Vanessa if she persisted in those ugly attempts at one of Dinah Lance's Canary Cries. They were twice as deadly, if only because they could be artificially modulated for that purpose.

Yanking Vanessa towards her, Diana used the momentum to connect her fist with the woman's jaw. If she could continue to attack her, use the same methods as before to help burn off the Borg technology, perhaps she could weaken her to the point of incapacitation.

Yet, just as Diana recalled how she had fought Vanessa before, so had the Silver Swan. While her first blow landed true, subsequent ones were narrowed avoided by her opponent. Each attempt to strike the Swan was met with air as she deftly avoided the Amazonian technique. While the original Borg drone technology used on Vanessa had left her slow and methodical, the Starro had fused with the nanoprobes to create something as sleek and agile as any other alien species.

Diana had to unfurl the lasso and spin away from one of the Swan's returned blows. As she did so, she yanked her sword free. While the Silver Swan's Borg arm was missing a hand, she had no way of knowing if it could be... regenerated somehow. It had morphed from cannon to hand. How did she know it wouldn't revert back?

As Diana glanced down at her blade, she felt a shiver run down her spine. It should have come away red, just as it would have with any other Amazon. The liquid that dripped off of her weapon was a sickly pus, green and grey.

Yet another reminder that what was within the vessel was on the losing end of the fight if Diana did not help.

Galvanized by the knowledge that she was fighting more machine than woman, Diana turned. Quickly, she leapt up into the air and spun, bringing her leg down in a move she had once learned from Selina Kyle, of all people. She hooked her leg around the Swan's neck and threw her to the ground with a roar. Diana somersaulted forward in the momentum, then turned to face her opponent so she could strike again.

The Swan was ready for her. The purple shield that had been used to block phaser fire buffered - but couldn't completely block - Diana's sword. But, it did slow it down. Instead of lopping off the Swan's arm as she had hoped, her blade was stuck in the already deactivated shoulder. This time, it wouldn't pull free. She abandoned the weapon.

The Swan rose quickly, back to her feet and whirling to face Diana. "We have been programmed to adapt. We will adapt to Wonder Woman's technique. Resistance is futile."

"It is never futile to _hope_ , Sister." Diana spun once more, her foot connecting solidly with the Swan's jaw. It struck so hard that she could hear something break, although she couldn't tell if it was bone or the fastening for her metal jaw.

The Swan staggered, clearly thrown by yet another deactivating part. The arm with its still exposed flesh reached up, clawing at the faceplate as if she could simply pull it back into place. It had thrown her. When she tried to open her mouth, nothing but a metallic whirr emerged, distorted and fading.

Diana had damaged her vocal modifications. She rushed her again, landing blow after blow to the Swan's jaw, neck and already broken shoulder.

Eventually, the Swan's arm began to belch plasma sparks. Crippled, she backpedalled before looking to Diana again. For the first time since the battle had begun, Diana saw something that the technology had hidden away.

The Omega somehow seemed blacker than the night around them against Vanessa's grey, necrotic skin. But, in her eye… Diana saw _hatred_. She saw the darkness.

And then the Swan took off into the air one more time.

She would be lost. Diana was already so weak. To fly, to pursue… Maybe she couldn't.

But, she loved Vanessa too much to ever abandon her. Even if it took the last breath in her body.

Pulling from a strength deep within, summoning divine power even when she was sure the coffers were empty, Diana leapt again. She lifted herself off the ground with the same force that had driven her across battlefields and pulled the lasso free once more.

No one had died today. If Diana could preserve Vanessa's soul long enough, she could beg the gods' forgiveness for Hackett's death.

She swung the lasso out. It snaked around Vanessa's arm, then around the other until Diana had a solid grip. She pulled the Swan closer until she was flying alongside her, the two of them climbing ever higher.

The Silver Swan could not speak. But, with the lasso touching flesh, Vanessa could.

Diana pulled the lasso taut, opening her mind to the woman trapped within the cybernetic prison. "Vanessa, hear me, sister."

 _ **Your grace! Please! I cannot do this much longer!**_

The Swan tried to pull away, more aware than before that there was another voice between them. Diana held fast, desperately seeking the soul beneath the abomination.

 _ **It's too loud! It's always in here, talking. The Starro, it's never quiet -**_

 _ **I can't think -**_

"Let me help you!" Diana cried, tugging her even closer.

Vanessa's voice grew quieter. _You can't help me._

Diana's eyes widened as she realized that the girl was losing control as the Swan struggled against the lasso even harder.

 _Let me go before they make me kill you -_

"I will never abandon you, Vanessa." Diana held fast, vaguely aware that they had stopped in their upward climb. The two of them now hovered hundreds of feet above the buildings over Starfleet Command. "I did so once, and I will never do so again. Even if it means my death."

The ocular implant suddenly blazed into a radiant lavender light. The Omega burned again, as if it had just been branded.

"Then… you… will…" The Swan's modulation had begun to repair itself, a low, throaty and discordant cacophony. "Fulfill... that. Imperative…"

One of the wings curled around them and Diana felt a sharp, hot pain lance through her back. The wing went between ribs, through armor like it was cloth, and lodged firmly in her torso. She gasped, mouth agape as the pain rippled through her with such ferocity the air left her lungs.

And then it struck again.

Another wing pierced her on the other side, just as deep as the first.

The other two repulsor wings kept the Swan aloft, but Diana remained impaled upon the very implements that she had been unable to lash with her weapon.

The lasso still kept glowing, brilliant light in the sea of darkness. Diana forced herself to focus on that. Even as her vision began to cloud, as she tasted blood the first time she convulsed with pain, she held tight.

"Such is… the way of an Amazon, Vanessa." Diana managed to breathe. There was no thought of her own life in that moment, just of the scared girl beneath those lethal actions. "Because I love you… and that is… the only Truth I know."

Diana began to sag, unable to keep herself aloft. As gravity began to weigh on her, the wings pierced her deeper. A scream tore from her lips as she struggled to grip the lasso.

She had fought many. She had been close to death's door once or twice…

But, perhaps she should have kept drachmas to pay the ferryman after all.

"Diana?" The voice did not belong to the Silver Swan. Somehow, not through her mind, but through her lips… Vanessa spoke her name.

As the Queen of Themyscira met the eyes of her wayward subject, the true horror of what Vanessa had done pierced through the haze of mind control, both psionic and cybernetic.

"Peace, Sister." Diana breathed, her lips beginning to go numb.: "And you will walk in Elysium tonight."

Vanessa's expression shifted from horrified, seemingly unable to do more than watch as the Swan's wings drove deeper into Diana, to the barest sense of relief. She understood.

 _Thank you_.

The thought brushed against her mind from the lasso.

 _I'm sorry. I love you, my princess._

Diana's grip tightened as her tiara began to glow white.

Diana of Themyscira had been many things.

She had been the Daughter of Hippolyta.

She had been the Daughter of Zeus.

She had been the Wonder Woman.

She had been, for a brief moment, partner and lover to Steve Trevor.

To James Kirk.

She had loved. Sisters, brothers, friends, family.

She had _loved_.

Diana channelled that swell of love into the lasso of Hestia.

With a brilliant scream, a beautiful dance of pain and euphoria, the Silver Swan began to turn the amber of molten metal. She began to melt, the wings seizing up in Diana's torso as they ripped through something altogether more vital than simple muscles.

Diana held on, giving the last of her life to the last of Vanessa's.

As Diana's vision began to grow dark, she could see the Omega symbol begin to shine as brilliantly as the lasso itself.

The stain from Vanessa's soul burned away as the last of the Silver Swan melted.

The wings broke off from the host body. With the last of her strength, Diana pulled her sister close and let the lasso slip away.

She had promised not to abandon her. As they plummeted to the earth…

She made good on that promise.

Diana of Themyscira had been many things.

But, now…

She was gone.


	55. To Save the World, Part 1: Act IV

**To Save the World, Part 1: Act IV**

As the night officially fell over San Francisco, Jim tore through every obstacle in his way to the Federation Headquarters. It was only a few minutes, yet the way his blood rushed through his ears told him that - somehow - it wasn't fast enough. There was a weight in his chest, just like there had been when he'd known the _Enterprise_ was going down unless he kicked her crystals back into alignment. It was the same weight that had settled in his stomach just before they'd been attacked by Krall's swarm.

It was the sensation that the other shoe was about to drop, no matter what he did.

Jim just had to hope it wasn't the bomb.

He heard a horrendous squeal from somewhere in the distance, then caught a flash of light somewhere in the direction of Starfleet Command. As he pulled the bike up to the Federation Assembly building, he swung around to look towards the buildings he knew like the back of his hand.

Judging from the flares of light, the fight was somewhere around Building 2, home to many of the admirals and higher-ranking personnel. They would have evacuated by now, but that didn't mean anyone was safe. The two powerhouses had crossed the length of the city in less time than it had taken Jim to get just across the downtown area.

The longer he stared at the halo of light just peeking through in between the buildings between campuses… the colder that weight got in his stomach.

Jim glanced back at the Federation Headquarters, knowing that he should go inside. But, even if he did, there was every indication that Doctor Anderson wouldn't be in there. He needed to find her. Scotty wouldn't have anything new to tell him.

A streak of golden light shot upwards, soaring over the buildings in his view.

Instantly, he knew.

"Diana…" Jim kicked the bike back into high gear and tore off towards Starfleet Command. Not that he could do anything, but he had to see how she was doing. If he needed to evacuate the crew…

What had lingered for eternity for Diana happened in but an instant for him.

One moment, Jim had swung the bike around, straining to see what precisely the Swan and Diana were doing, locked in combat in the clouds. He even jumped off of the vehicle so he could run into the grass between the buildings, rapt with attention.

The next minute, he watched Diana jerk once, then twice as flashes of silver reflected the light of the lasso.

And then there was a blossom of color. Amber and reds mixed together in a brilliant ball in the sky. Jim had to blink the stars out of his eyes, but tried to keep his eyes on them both.

He only barely saw the lasso dim as Diana and her opponent plummeted.

"No…" His heart stuck in his throat as fear - the same fear he'd felt when he thought Spock was going to die on Nibiru - gripped him tightly. "Please, no…" She kept falling… and falling… he kept expecting her to catch herself, to soar back upwards.

And then he saw the Swan's wings, lanced through Diana's body for just a moment.

" _DIANA!"_ Her name tore from his throat, yet it sounded a million miles away.

Diana hit the top of the building with a horrific crash. The building, clearly in the throes of a fire, began to crumble around the gaping hole she had clearly left.

Starfleet Headquarters collapsed on Diana.

And Jim could _feel_ her… let go.

"No, no, dammit - " Jim gasped, his vision momentarily blurring as sheer, irrational panic threatened to overcome him. He had to get her out, he had to… somehow… she _couldn't be gone_.

" _Jim!_ " The voice came from behind him, distant but most assuredly not from a communicator.

He turned, at a loss, only to spot Chief Engineer Scott on other side of the street. He had clearly sprinted all the way from the assembly building, but for the life of him, Jim had momentarily forgotten why.

Diana was gone. That was all that he could feel, could think. For one, terrifying moment, he hadn't been there.

Then, he remembered why Scotty would be looking for him.

Just like that, all the pieces clicked back into place. The panic subsided as Jim's mental awareness and willpower gripped the irrational fear tightly and shoved it back down.

Diana could survive - and had survived - _anything_.

"Ye didn't answer your bloody communicator, sir!" The Scotsman bellowed as the captain approached.

Jim didn't bother to address Scotty's concern. "Mister Scott, we need to get Diana out of there! _Now!_ " He ordered as he sprinted back over to his crewmate.

"Diana, I…" Scotty looked lost for a moment, clearly having pursued the captain only when it became clear he wasn't answering his communicator. "Oh, heavens, no…" He breathed, shocked as he realized what had become of Starfleet Command. "She's not… I mean, she's in _there_?"

Jim nodded, mind racing as he tried to put himself back on track. There were still lives at stake, but he had to make sure he did everything he could. "Yes, and I need everyone down here. Dig her out with your bare hands if you have to, but we've _got_ to get to her."

Scotty nodded dumbly for a moment. "A-Aye, sir. Get right on it. But, I found Adrianna Anderson, and it's… it's bad, Jim."

He wasn't sure anything could be any worse than the way his stomach was rolling. "How bad?"

"She's on her way to a shuttle in an evacuation zone. There'll be tons of civilians. We cannae just send a security detail - "

Jim shook his head, already three steps ahead of his engineer. They would dig Diana out. She would come back from this. Nothing kept her down. He was in denial about the very notion that he was in denial. It wasn't denial if he was certain she could survive. "Just give me the coordinates and I'm on it."

Scotty motioned to Jim's side. "Sent it to ye tricorder."

Jim glanced down, as if he had just remembered the device at his belt. He rested a hand on the tricorder, then turned to face the smoldering wreckage of the Command building.

"Jim…." Scotty breathed beside him, clearly watching it as well. "No one could survive that. The temperature's gotta be hot as… well…."

"Hot as a Romulan warbird's phaser?" Jim asked, not buying the skepticism. He turned to Scotty, stony-faced and determined. "She didn't even break a sweat that time. Don't be so sure about this one."

Without waiting for a response, Jim flipped open his tricorder with one hand to check the coordinates, then moved for his communicator. Mounting the hoverbike again, he quickly oriented himself before hailing his ship.

"Kirk to the _Enterprise!_ "

" _We read you, Jim."_ Spock's voice was the closest thing to a comfort he was going to get in that moment.

Jim swerved around an upturned car. "Spock, I need as many people as we can spare down at Starfleet Command, _right now!_ And tell Bones to bring any of the equipment contaminated with chronitons down to the site, too! Scotty will give you precise coordinates!"

The pause on the other end was most assuredly his first officer trying to asses the situation. Not for the first time in Jim's life, he wished his friend would just act. _"What has occurred at Starfleet Headquarters? Are you alright?"_

"It's not me you need to be worried about!" Jim said as he glanced down at the nav output on the bike. He was across town from Anderson. "Diana's buried under a building and I think Vanessa - the Silver Swan - is with her! She looked…" Jim hesitated, then abandoned the thought altogether. "Just get down here! She _has_ to be alive, which means the Swan could be, too!" He made a move to end the transmission, then stopped.

He honestly wasn't sure how the crew would get to Diana, and if the Swan had survived, then they could be in danger.

And Cale was somewhere on the planet. They were up against two masterminds and a very dangerous puppet that Jim couldn't tell what state she'd been in when they fell. This was a job for more than a Starfleet crew. It was a job for...

Jim thought fast, darting through traffic. "Patch me directly to Admiral Kent on the _Farragut!_ "

If Spock had any objections to that, he was careful not to voice them. Instead, there was a moment of silence on his communicator as Jim tried to cross another blocked street, only to find himself truly at an impasse when he realized his bike couldn't get over a delivery truck. He pivoted and swung around just as he heard the voice on the other line.

" _Kent here. Kirk, what's going on?"_

Jim's mouth moved as fast as the bike did while he was forced to backtrack. "Diana's down, and I don't know for how long. I think she might have taken the Silver Swan with her. It's what Vanessa started calling herself when she saw Diana. But, she's trapped under an entire building, I need to find Doctor Cyber and I have no idea where Cale is, but I'm _sure_ she's somewhere down here."

His bike came to a sharp halt as he realized his only other way to get down the street was now a collapsed roadway. He couldn't pass it with just the bike, it was too steep. But, there was a makeshift ramp from a fallen sign…

"Listen, Diana said it herself: She used to have a team. And that team took care of people. Now, I am going to find Doctor Cyber, but I can't be everywhere at once. And neither can my crew. There are civilians who are scared, I don't know if Cale's working with anyone else, but I can be damn sure she has to have some kind of contingency plan. The fact is, we don't need a Starfleet Admiral." Jim said, pausing to rest the communicator against his forehead for a second as he chose his next words carefully. He finally brought the speaker back to his mouth as he said, "We need a member of the Justice League. So, if you happen to know of anyone who fits that description, then you find them and get them _down here_." When Kent didn't immediately reply, Jim sighed and decided to play hardball. "Kirk out." He slapped the communicator shut, then glanced at the roadway.

As Jim took the jump using the road sign, he could only tell himself that if nothing else, he believed with all his heart… Diana was in there.

She just needed a little time.

* * *

It was warm.

The scent of lavender mixed with the ocean breeze danced lazily through her senses. The sounds of waves lapping the shore, the distant laughter of her sisters at play, they all began to lull her to her surroundings.

Diana shifted from her prone position. Warm sand slipped through her fingers as she stirred. Even though her closed eyes, she saw the amber glow of sunlight on her face. There were drums in the distance, sounds of hooves beating the sand.

Sitting up, Diana opened her eyes to the paradise around her. The crystal clear ocean with its vibrant blue depths, the very cliffs that had been both barrier and protection for her people. The very shores that her mother had given thanks to the gods daily for. It was all before her. It was not the planet they had transported to.

Her heart was at peace. She was as a child for a brief moment, whose only thoughts of Man's World were in the time before history had been written. She scrambled to her feet, at ease in the old leather training garb and sandals of her childhood.

She was _home_.

" _You know, it doesn't matter how many times you described this place to me, it's never quite the same as seeing it for myself."_ The husky and charismatic voice brought a sudden well of emotion, tears suddenly warming her eyes. It had been two hundred years since she had heard the man behind her. Two hundred years since she had been forced to say goodbye.

" _Bruce…_ " Diana breathed, turning to face the man who had helped remind her to step out of the shadows, to be a leader. Their friendship had been fraught with conflict and differing opinions. Where he saw darkness, she saw light. Where he saw smoke and mirrors, she saw magic. If perhaps they had been a bit less contentious, she would have embraced him now. But, Bruce was never the sort for physical gestures.

She had never seen him as at peace as he seemed. He looked… young. Hints of grey to his hair, but clearly younger than she remembered knowing him. And in light khakis and a white button-down, Bruce Wayne was nothing like the dark knight she had met all those years ago.

Diana's heart sank as she realized why. " _Am I…"_

" _Diana, I think we both know I'm precisely the wrong person to ask about whether or not someone is dead."_ Bruce said, slipping his hands into his pockets as he walked over to her. He was barefoot, toes playing with the sand. _"But, I know I am. Or, at the least, I'm not in Gotham."_

" _How could you be in Elysium?"_ Diana asked, reaching out almost hesitantly as he came to stop before her. Her hand brushed his shoulder, half-expecting him not to be there at all. _"You've never professed to be a man of faith, Bruce."_ It had been another bone of contention for them. Yet, all of that seemed insignificant in the knowledge that he was here. That his life of service to his city had been rewarded.

Bruce smiled at her, silent for a long moment. It had been so long since she had seen him smile, seen him at all. But, in the end, he had pushed Damien away, pushed Selina away, and even Diana. It was a poignant reminder of how she had not been ready to give her heart to anyone, even if he had wished for it. _"I'm not. But, I believed in you. Your message, your abilities. And…_ " Bruce shrugged a bit. _"Apparently, helping you retrieve the sword of Achilles won me a spot in the Greek hall of heroes."_

" _Then, shouldn't you be in Gotham? With your family?"_ Everything felt right, but… strangely so. She knew what others saw in Elysium, what the promise of eternal paradise should have been for her. But, she couldn't quite remember why she knew it so intimately now. Someone had been in Elysium recently, but her mind wished to focus only on the memories before her.

" _I spent too long training myself to know when things were_ _ **too**_ _perfect. Starro, Brainiac… They always used the memory of my parents and the perfect life they envisioned for me. I imagine any 'heaven' I'd have earned would have driven me mad in a week. I'd be looking for the man behind the curtain.."_ Bruce turned away, motioning to the cliffs above. _"But, as one of your siblings told me, they could give me somewhere else to go. So, Odysseus, Jason and I have plenty in common."_

As her gaze followed his to the cliffs, she spotted two men fighting with short swords and shields. She gathered that those were the heroes in question. Bruce had been placed among the greatest warriors of her people.

" _It's not a bad way to pass the time."_ He remarked, although she got the impression there was a sense of… waiting to the statement. Quirking an eyebrow, she stared him down until he elaborated. _"One of these days, we'll get called back to a life of service. I guess."_

" _Only you could have heaven and be bored with it, Mister Wayne._ " The playful attitude, the razor-sharp wit…

" _Lois!_ " Diana grinned and whirled around to face the newcomer. Without hesitation, the two embraced. She did not question how and when Lois had arrived, she only recognized her long-lost sister. She was young and full of life, dressed as another one of her Amazon sisters. _"Oh, I have missed you, sister…"_ She held Lois tight, unabashedly and greedily making up for the time they had been separated.

" _I've missed you, too, Diana…"_ She breathed, running her hand along Diana's back to ease and comfort her. They had not been so close until Conner's birth.

The thought of Lois's son and husband gave Diana pause. She pulled back, resting her hands on either side of her friend's face. _"Kal and Conner miss you, too. Every day. I wish they could see you now."_

Lois's radiant smile faded a bit at the mention of her family. _"I know. I've been keeping an eye on them, against your mother's objections. But, you know me, if I want something, I get it."_

Diana's heart skipped a beat. She wasn't sure if such things still were possible in Elysium, but the sensation felt real. _"My mother._ " Her grip shifted to Lois's shoulders, squeezing gently as she quietly pled. _"I wish to see her. Can you take me to her?"_ Diana's voice trembled at the very thought of seeing her mother once more. It had been too long. Far too long.

Lois searched her face for a long moment, but she didn't know what the woman hoped to find. Instead, she nodded and pat Diana's hand gently before pulling free and motioning for her to follow. " _Of course. She's not the only one who wants to see you, either."_

As the two of them began to cross the length of the beach towards the great doors leading back to the city, Diana realized that Bruce was not following. _"Will you not join us?"_

Bruce chuckled a bit, then shook his head. _"Diana, you don't need me where you're going. I just really wanted to see you. One more time."_ He motioned to Lois beside her. _"As per usual, Ms. Lane has all the answers."_

Diana nodded, albeit perplexed, then turned to leave.

Behind her, Bruce added, _"I'm glad he found you. Or you found him."_ She began to pivot back towards him for a moment. _"I can see why it was so hard for you. He's a tough act to follow, in any life."_

Diana furrowed her brow, then felt Lois tug her arm.

Who was Bruce referring to? It wasn't that the person wasn't important, but… it was if his name just… had not occurred to her.

" _Steve._ " Diana muttered as the memories returned. The very real connection of the pilot, her lover, the man who had waited literal lifetimes in Elysium, only for her to never arrive. The man who had made a deal with the gods themselves to be reborn as - " _Jim."_ Diana's voice was more certain now, the simple haze of contentment starting to clear as she and Lois walked a path that climbed up to the great temples of Themyscira.

She had been in San Francisco. She had been fighting… Vanessa.

Diana was dead. And Jim was on his own.

" _This place makes you forget things you don't want to remember."_ Lois said, as if she could read her mind. _"And most people have their own personal little… paradise. But, some people don't. Or, they can't accept what it is."_

" _Like Bruce,"_ Diana replied.

Lois nodded as the two of them passed one of the temples. Diana knew that the distance from those shores to the temples should have taken much longer, yet somehow they were nearly to the great Senate Building. _"I couldn't, either. There was always Clark, always Conner, always Martha…"_ She shrugged. _"But, it never felt right. There was never a time when Supernan was needed in my paradise. And that wasn't Clark. He was a hero, even when he owed the world nothing. So, I kept looking for ways to see Clark: the real Clark."_

" _And so, you came here?"_ Diana glanced around, more aware than ever that she was in the Nexus.

" _More or less."_ The two of them paused as they reached the Senate building. As Diana's feet came to a halt, she recognized that something seemed… off. The sun was warm, but not as warm as it should have been. The lavender was in the air, but there were no accompanying smells of orchids. Everything was carefully keyed to a specific tone and aesthetic.

" _Jim said Steve never left the bar in Veld."_ Diana said, recalling the conversations they had had regarding this near-death experience. _"He couldn't come here?"_

" _Oh, Diana,"_ Lois said with a sigh. She smiled a bit, shaking her head and reaching up to touch her friend's arm. _"He didn't need to. He got a better offer."_

The doors to the Senate building opened before Diana could ask why Lois hadn't asked the same of herself, the same for Kal.

Diana had lost so many in her life, but none had ever pained her as much as losing Hippolyta, her mother, the Queen of the Amazons. And yet… there she was.

Diana heard her name on her mother's lips, desperate, raw, and disbelieving. She turned to face her, eyes widening as her mother rushed towards her. She wasn't entirely sure certain how she reached her mother as she seemingly blinked and was in her mother's arms. Those strong arms that had carried her since she was a babe embraced her with unrelenting, unbridled joy. The graceful and powerful hands that had taken Diana's face in her hands to comfort gripped her daughter tightly and held her close.

" _My Diana…"_ Her mother wept. _"Oh, my Diana…"_

Diana turned her face towards her mother's golden hair, holding her tightly. Her tears fell unabashedly as she found herself in the very warmth and loving embrace that she had missed for so long. _"I'm here, mother…"_ She breathed, all thoughts of the world beyond this moment gone. _"I'm here…"_

It would have been easy to let the torrent of emotion overtake them, allowing mother and daughter to spend all the time they desired to weep with joy. But, her mother had never been one to let such emotions rule over her for long.

Hippolyta pulled back, reaching up to brush hair out of her daughter's eyes, smiling as she did so. _"Let me look at you."_ After a moment, she pulled her daughter back up to her feet.

Diana couldn't help but beam back at the mothering attention. _"You look wonderful, mother."_

Another voice answered her, before her mother could. _"And you look strong."_ Diana looked past her mother towards the other guests that had accompanied her mother from the building.

It had been over three hundred years since Diana had seen General Antiope, her aunt and mentor. In that time, she had only her memory to hold onto, save for the few tapestries and vases crafted in the woman's honor.

But, they all paled compared to the real thing.

" _Antiope._ " Diana's voice disappeared for a moment as her throat chose that moment to close up again with more tears.

Antiope simply watched her like a hawk, her own eyes warm with tears, yet they stubbornly remained unshed. The general was not the kind to shed tears. It was her words that truly touched Diana's heart. _"You have worn my symbol well, Diana. You have made me very proud."_

Diana smiled through her tears, then took a deep breath to collect herself. Her hand trembled as she brushed tears from her eyes and nodded in thanks. She had made Antiope proud, her _mother_ proud… through her deeds on Man's World. A world that she was distinctly absent from in that moment.

When she finally spoke again, she was sure to keep her voice steady. _"I didn't think I would ever see any of you again."_ Diana's expression darkened as she found herself, once again, confronted with the reality of such a blessing. She turned to her mother once more. _"I'm sorry, mother. I promised to make myself worthy of our people, but… I'm here. I'm not protecting them."_ As the words came to her, Diana began to remember that which Elysium had held back from her. Vanessa, the Swan, the bomb threatening countless lives, and Cale's evil spreading across the galaxy. _"I couldn't even save Vanessa."_

" _But, my princess, it was never about saving me."_

Vanessa stepped out from behind a few of the onlookers, women that Diana only now realized were her fellow sisters, once that had fallen against foes. The Germans, Steppenwolf… Darkseid himself. They were all here now.

And so was Vanessa Katalepis, looking as youthful and as excited to see the world around her as she had the day that Diana had looked into the girl's mind. No hint of Borg or Starro, just Vanessa. With her dark hair now in ringlets to rival any goddess, beautiful and free, she was the picture of peace.

" _The Borg had already taken so much from me, Diana."_ Vanessa said, her voice soothing and somehow without any of the blame that Diana carried on her own shoulders. She stepped forward to meet the woman who had been her Princess, her Ambassador to Man's World. _"This was never about saving me in that life. It was about making sure I was still worthy of this place."_

" _But, I promised I would bring you home…"_ Diana began, only somewhat aware that her mother had moved aside so that her daughter could meet her subject. Her hand ran down Vanessa's cheek, free of blemishes and implants, of the torture and scarring.

" _I asked to see the shores of Themyscira, my princess. This is what I wanted."_ Vanessa reached up to touch Diana's hand gently in return, as if she could sooth all ills. _"You stopped me from killing anyone else. You saved me from a Tartarus of my own making."_

Diana's eyes widened at the turn of phrase. She understood. _"The Nexus creates the world it thinks you want. If you had been turned into a killer…"_

" _It would have fed that dark part of me for eternity."_ Vanessa spoke that which Diana couldn't bring herself to. _"I never would have seen my mother, my family again. In my own Elysium or anyone else's."_

" _But, even so... "_ Diana sighed. _"Even with such a blessing… there is still so much more I must do. I am not ready to leave Man's World."_

" _Nor are you forced to, Diana."_ Antiope's voice cut through the air, blunt and honest as ever. She stepped past Vanessa and took Diana's hand, pulling her over to face the shining sea beyond the island. In a moment, Hippolyta was at her other side.

" _You know your heritage now, Diana."_ Hippolyta said, resting her hand on her daughter's back. _"You are not like us."_

Antiope turned, clenching her fist and gesturing to the sky. _"You faced Ares. You_ _ **destroyed**_ _Ares, because only a god can kill another god."_

" _Diana, my daughter…"_ Hippolyta reached up, resting her hands on Diana's cheeks as she had done those many years ago. _"You saw what can happen to a god. They do not die. They sleep. And that sleep lasts as long as they wish."_

" _What… what are you saying?"_ Diana's stomach turned as she tried to understand. But, something told her she already knew.

" _You have been my greatest sorrow while were parted."_ Hippolyta brushed her thumb across her daughter's cheek, smiling. _"But, you will always be my greatest joy. Because, you have fulfilled your destiny."_ The significance of the words rang true, but she didn't know what to think of them. Her mother pressed on, more direct. _"Diana, gods are not_ _ **mortal**_ _. There are no doors that you cannot open."_

" _I'm a goddess…"_ Diana breathed. It was the Truth, flowing from her lips like honey. Even if she didn't know what that meant… it was The Truth. _"I_ _ **did**_ _hear Athena speak to me… She welcomed me to my birthright."_ She looked up at her mother, then to Antiope. _"I am the Goddess… of Truth."_

" _And once the truth is known, it is absolute."_ Lois echoed Diana's own words to Jim, when he had begged for her to remove Steve's life from his mind.

Death was not her destiny. She would never remain in the Nexus. She could… pass freely to and from it, as Apollo could. Because Apollo had given her the birthright of Truth.

S _he_ was a goddess.

" _You have spent so long trying to be one of us, Diana."_ Lois said with a smile. _"But, that's what makes you so wonderful. So, own it."_ The patented Lois Lane attitude came back in full force, breaking through the gravitas of her family's heavy words. _"Be the Goddess of Truth. Because, they need you. You make everyone better. Including my family. So go back there and tell Clark he's run for long enough."_

" _Lois…"_ Diana breathed, not sure what to say or how to say it. There were not words to adequately thank her, or to promise her that she would do as requested.

Voices began to echo around her. Not those in Themyscira, but somehow… beyond. Familiar voices.

" _See?"_ Lois said. _"Can't you hear them?"_

 **I can't see her! Spock, help me move this!**

" _Nyota."_ Diana recognized the voice instantly as it came into clear focus.

 **She has to be alive! Don't give up on her!**

She could hear Leonard McCoy, his mind screaming for her to come back, running calculations about something called chronitons.

 **Lassie! Help me! There's got to be a way we can lever this free!**

Montgomery.

Diana could hear them all. She could hear the words, spoken and in thought only.

She could hear Spock calculating the odds that she was alive, while fervently hoping that she would defy them.

She could hear Jim. One thought, even as he was further than all of them for some reason.

 **Come on, Angel. I believe in you, Diana. I need you.**

" _Your worshippers call to you, Diana."_ Hippolyta breathed, slipping an arm around her daughter's shoulders. _"Make sure you are worthy of them."_

* * *

Being the captain of a starship meant that the name James Kirk went a lot of places, got him through a lot of tough spots. Unfortunately, it couldn't make him stop people who didn't know him from Adam from evacuating. And he couldn't risk grounding every shuttle until they knew precisely what was inside that bomb.

Yet, there was the catch. If Doctor Cyber was the key to seeing inside those holograms, Jim _had_ to find a way to get to her.

His captain bars got him into the evacuation zone, but he had to ditch the hoverbike from that point on. And that did _not_ help.

There was an order, a rank and file to Starfleet operations, and that normally extended to the local police force. But, since Khan's attack on the city years ago, even with the Augment movement, there was only so much that the city could do to deal with a mass exodus of one of the largest populations on the North American continent.

The evacuation zone was choked full of people in various states of panic and worry.

Jim had spent a lot of time trying to point out all the ways he was a more evolved Steve Trevor, but in truth… there was a lot Jim had never seen.

There was a part of him that he knew he had lacked before the events on Delphi. It was the part of him that could compartmentalize the suffering of others for the objective at hand. It was the part that could tell himself that law enforcement would get all these people out of here…

But, Jim had to stop things from escalating.

As he wormed his way through crowds of people, he checked the tricorder to see if Scotty had been able to send updated coordinates. No such luck. Jim wasn't sure if that was a good or a bad thing. Best case scenario, they had found Diana. Worst case…

Jim toggled his screen for a picture of Adrianna Anderson and vehemently stopped thinking about the worst case.

He had a knack for picking people and things out of crowds. He'd done it when researching the original terrorist attack by "John Harrison", and he'd done it chasing down Edison. As long as he could get a good look at the woman in question, he would be able to spot her.

As with all too many people in Jim's life, Adrianna Anderson seemed completely innocuous. There was nothing to suggest that she was anything more than a Starfleet science officer, yet Jim knew that Diana had been absolutely certain that the cochlear implant she had housed an ancestor… who happened to be a… terrorist. Criminal. Supervillain. Whatever.

Jim tried to keep that in mind as he kept navigating the crowds.

 _The ones that are here have already been triaged_ , he told himself.

Unbidden, he found himself thinking of the No Man's Land outside of Veld. As the days had worn on, much of Jim's memories as Steve had faded into obscurity. As promised, the good ones had stayed. The bad ones… they were hazy, almost like trying to remember his first babysitter.

But, he could still remember the way he'd trudged through mud, telling himself to keep looking forward. Normally, that wasn't Jim Kirk.

Right now, it _had_ to be.

As he passed a shuttle check-in station, Jim caught sight of a line of evacuees. Their shuttle was about to land, kicking up dust around the platform. Families, business owners, civilians that had nothing to do with grandiose galactic politics, they just served coffee and sandwiches. Without meaning to, Jim found himself drawn to one of the families. The parents were wrangling their young kids while another adult - sister, aunt, maybe? - tugged her long coat tighter and stepped closer to them as the shuttle completed its landing procedure. As they spoke, he caught the conversation. The man was worried about the flowers in his shop while his wife reminded him that there was still plenty of time in the season to get more if the supply was lost. They seemed well to do, sure, but casual. Hard-working people.

But, hard-working folk didn't wear Starfleet regulation boots.

The woman tagging along with the family in her long coat clearly did. And the more Jim watched her, the more suspicious she seemed.

"Hey!" Jim called, pushing past a few more people as he tried to get over to the shuttle pilot letting people on. "Stop! Don't let that woman on!" He knew the chances that they'd hear him over the shuttle's idling were slim to none, but enough people started to part as they realized a uniformed Starfleet captain was trying to cross the zone.

Jim pulled his phaser as he finally cleared a path and began to sprint towards her.

Anderson turned towards the commotion and spotted Jim coming towards her. She swiveled, as if to jump onto the shuttle, but the pilot had spotted her and grabbed his phaser. In the blink of an eye, her expression twisted from one of worry to frustration and fear. She turned, dropping the long coat and sprinting away from the shuttle zone.

She broke from the crowd, heading off onto the grass towards a row of old visitor buildings, long since condemned and scheduled to be demolished in the next few months. Without hesitation, he sprinted after with a burst of adrenaline.

He'd been getting a bit worn out trying to sprint across town earlier, but now that he had his prize in sight, the emotional high spurred him on like an Olympic athlete. He couldn't afford to lose her now, not when everything counted on it.

Anderson ducked behind a building and Jim followed, trying to pivot faster than his feet could keep up. He dropped, sliding along the gravel as he gripped his phaser tight and tried to get off at least one stun in her direction. It didn't land, but it did throw her off.

He caught himself on a crumbling wall and used the momentum to get back to his feet just in time to watch the woman stumble and fall as she tried to avoid another few phaser hits.

Quickly collecting himself, Jim rose the phaser in his hands, poised to fire as he slowly approached her.

"Give it up, Anderson," He ordered as she tried to scramble back a bit, facing him. Oddly enough, he didn't see much fear. Just calculating and cold survivalist instinct. "And don't bother to deny it, I know who you are, Doctor. Who you _really_ are." The woman halted, tilting her head as she tried to get a read on him. Jim made sure she didn't get too long to think about it. "Diana's told me enough about you to know I don't like you, Doctor Cyber." Anderson's eyes flickered with an uneasy, clearly cybernetic charge. "So, you tell me how to disarm your nasty present for the Federation Assembly, and maybe I won't plug you into a potato while they figure out what to do with you."

"There are plans within plans here, Captain," Anderson said, smiling in a way that made his skin crawl. "The statistical likelihood that you will be able to discern the location of the secondary trigger means that even if I told you the maximum yield and frequency of the weapon, you're not going to be able to stop it." The woman had backed up to an old trash can, pulling herself up to a standing position. Behind her, the old glass panes on the visitor's center reflected the smoldering wreckage of the Starfleet Command building in the distance. "Veronica and I took great pains to ensure that Wonder Woman would be unable to assist."

"The Silver Swan isn't a threat," Jim said, hoping that in this case, no news had been good news. He could see her cochlear implant blinking behind her ear in the reflection of the glass. "And Diana's pretty resilient. If I remember correctly, Vanessa could handle a lot of Borg implantation, yet her body kept rejecting it."

"Yes, it was a unique scientific opportunity, that's true," Anderson said with a cruel little smile. "But, the Starro allowed me to conquer that particular obstacle. In fact, I would be willing to discuss it with you, but that implies you'd even grasp the basic understanding of nanotechnology and xenobiology necessary - "

"You're stalling." Jim interrupted.. "Your secondary detonator isn't as sophisticated as what you planned, or I'd be hearing about it. Which means the only reason Jaylah couldn't hack into your holo-program is because you've _never_ had the detonator." She quirked an eyebrow at him, clearly confused. "You were just the diversion."

Before Anderson could open her mouth to reply, Jim took aim at the cochlear implant and fired. The implant flared, then popped loudly before the outer casing fell off of Adrianna's ear.

Jim was there as fast as he could, barely managing to catch Adrianna with one arm and lowering her to the ground. With one hand at her neck, he checked her pulse to find it strong, then turned her head so he could see what his shot had done. Unfortunately, frying the Cyber implant had left her ear black and burnt, but… she was alive.

He stood and made his way over to the spot where the implant had fallen. After a second of rooting around for it, he picked it up in one hand and holstered his phaser with the other. It certainly looked dead…

Jim's gut said that was the right call. But, he wouldn't know until he heard from the source. He grabbed his communicator and hailed Jaylah. "Kirk to Jaylah. If I just did what I think I did, that hologram is gone."

There was a long pause on the other end. For a terrible moment, he was sure he'd miscalculated and lost one of his crew, his -

" _The hologram is deactivated! How did you know to do this?"_

"Tracked down Doctor Cyber and she kept talking. I realized if she had the ability to detonate the bomb, she would have. Then I remembered what you said about anything in the bomb being old and mechanical." Jim turned as two of the police finally caught up to him, clearly looking confused. He made sure to speak a little louder for their benefit, too. "Pretty sure Adrianna Anderson's about to wake up very confused, but she was the glue holding the holographic barrier together. You should be able to disarm the bomb, but if you can't, we need to find Cale. Fast."

" _But, where? I do not know this Cale, I do not know how she thinks._ " His ensign had mastered the art of answering rhetorical questions, but he had to agree with her on that. Not even Jim had a good notion of where she was. Diana was the only one who really knew how she thought.

Which was why they had to help her.

Jim began to walk idly in the direction of Starfleet Command. It would take him well over a half hour to run back to it, but having it in sight gave him some small comfort.

"I know. Look, you work on the bomb. If there's still a detonator, then there has to be a way you can track it. Don't rule anything out. Cale's been around for the last two hundred years, which means there might be some unorthodox technology. Just like with Krall. Kirk out." Quickly, he switched to another hail as he watched the fireglow in the distance, stomach churning. "Come on, Scotty..."

"You know, I have to say, you mortals are _so_ predictable." The presence had snuck up behind him out of nowhere, but instantly, he knew who was behind him. He'd only heard her voice once before, but… it was impossible. "You're always 'oh, boo-hoo, woe is me, the princess is dead! How shall I hope again?' Ha! Try turning someone into a pig. If that doesn't put a smile on your face, I don't know what does."

Jim slowly turned, chilled to the core as he faced the newcomer. "Circe."

Sure enough, the sorceress of Althea, the 'witch-goddess' as Diana had called her, stood before Jim in all her glory, a full three feet off of the ground. Bathed in an eerie lavender halo, she looked just the same as the last time he'd seen her. Flowing purple hair that went to her waist, manicured nails, all edges and curves in the wrong ways.

And she was looking at Jim like he was on the dinner menu.

With a flourish of delicate hands that he could still remember burning against his skull, she bowed a bit at his acknowledgment. "Captain," She purred, grinning with nothing but pure malice. "This has been lots of fun, but promises are promises." Her hand began to glow brightly with a ball of pure energy, not unlike the ones he'd seen on his bridge. "And I promised Diana I would make sure I took _everything_ away from her."

"How are you even here?" Jim asked, beginning to go for his phaser. She caught the motion and reached out with her other hand.

" _Ah-la-ta-na-ka."_ She intoned, the words ringing through his skull as if she'd been in his head all over again.

Jim groaned, falling to his knees as something threatened to split his head in two.

Circe lowered herself to the ground, striding across the grass until she could crouch down and face him.

"Did you have something to say, piggy man?" She cooed, clear that her throat wasn't just for the sake of poetry. "Keep squealing, I'd love to see how that turns out for you."

Jim forced his gaze up to hers, even as his body felt like it was weighed down with the force of an ocean. He didn't speak. He had a feeling she'd tell him what he needed to know anyway. She was just like Nero. The revenge ran so deep, she was dying to tell someone.

"I don't owe you an explanation as to my motives, but I would take great pleasure in explaining what I will do." Circe breathed, lips practically caressing the words. "First, I'm going to kill your crew. Your little band of merry men and women, her little _cult_. And then, I'm going to kill you. Then _finally,_ I will rip her soul from Hades myself just to tell her what I've done."

Jim's heart thudded in his chest as she very plainly laid out her intentions.

"So, you just sit right there and watch a weaver work." Circe said with a smile, patting his cheek condescendingly before standing and backing up. She was, clearly, a performer. She didn't just want to do it. She wanted Jim to _know._

The energy began to swell in her hands. He'd seen her channel energy on his ship, but this… this was so different. Circe's fingers moved, drawing sigils in the air before a great bolt of energy appeared before her. Reaching out, she took the power in her hand and held it aloft like a javelin. It was clear that it was concentrated, that if that made impact…

His crew… his _family_.

Diana. He didn't _know_ if Diana was alive. But, he certainly believed it with every fiber of his being.

Bones had once told Jim that he was the most responsible irresponsible man he'd known.

He didn't think about the cost. He never had.

Jim didn't know what he must have looked like to Circe as he pulled himself to his feet, magic snapping off of him like purple wires, sparking into the darkness.

His phaser was up in his hand and fired.

Circe's explosive magic slipped from her hands as the phaser bolt caught her in the shoulder.

And the world blossomed in light and fire before Jim was blown clear off of his feet and into the buildings behind him.

 **END OF PART ONE.**

 **TO BE CONTINUED...**


	56. To Save the World, Part 2: Teaser

**To Save the World, Part 2: Teaser**

 _ **Author's Note:**_ _OK, so, here we are! The last episode! It's FINALLY HERE! And of course, I do something that makes you all want to throw something at me, I am sure, and YES, I know, another cliffhanger, but you only have 4 more chapters after this one, so, I figure I better get them in while I can. Also, I am actually so far ahead on writing all of this that I'm working on the last chapter today and should have it done tomorrow. So that, combined with the, um... very intense nature of this chapter's end, means I will be posting the whole last episode this week. By Sunday, all parts of the episode will be out. It's my way of saying thank you to everyone for their continued support and also because you may come for me with pitchforks. Or sword and spear. Or phasers. Or bat'leths. I'm not sure about some of you. :D_

* * *

 _What man can escape the riddle of his life?_

 _In his very existence, he cannot truly understand the end of his days._

 _To Plato, I whispered such honeyed words so that he could begin to truly contemplate the vastness of eternity. Thus, I began those borne of my city, my first true worshippers, on their great journey to Understand._

 _Yet, there is Wisdom in not knowing. To know the date of one's death does not necessarily enrich the life yet still unlived. For the Fire that burns in my temple does not know the measure of the kindling that waits for its spark. The olive tree does not know how much more fruit it may still may still bear. And the olive does not know when it shall be plucked with gentle hands to feed its caregiver._

 _Yet, I tell you do not despair, my children. Such unknowns can be blessings. One must only be willing to accept that the riddle exists in order to understand it._

 _Just as the tree does not know when it shall be pulled by its roots from the soil…_

 _It also does not know when it will be planted in richer sod, to nurture and make the tree stronger than it has ever been._

 _Man cannot escape the riddle of his life._

 _For he only truly sees the shadows on the cave wall. He does not see beyond._

 _Attend and walk with me, my child._

 _Let me show you what lies beyond the cave._

* * *

Shadows danced from the flames licking at what was left of the Golden Gate visitor center.

The moment his eyes opened, James Kirk knew he was in a bad way. He could barely breathe.

The air was choked with flames and smoke, making his eyes water and his lungs burn.

He could hear Circe… somewhere… she was angry. To be fair, he really hoped that he had really messed up her day when he'd managed to shoot her.

" _What do you mean, they disabled the bomb?"_

" _Exactly what I'm telling you."_ The other voice replied. _"You didn't stop him in time, so we're going to have to do this the hard way._ " He recognized her…

Groaning, Jim tried to sit up, but realized he couldn't. He'd been through bad scraps, but… This was the worst in a while. He knew that because the pain… didn't seem so bad. But, his legs refused to move. His back was wet and slick.

There would be no getting up.

The concrete barrier he'd been thrown into had crumbled around him, but he hardly noticed. His vision was beginning to dim at the corners. The world was growing smaller.

Everything was in a fog.

Circe was still talking, even if she sounded underwater. There was a warm, wet trickle running down his ear and neck. He had a feeling he knew why he couldn't make out anything she said. But, her motives most assuredly would not have changed.

Wincing, Jim somehow willed his hand to his chirping communicator at his belt. With numb fingers, he pulled it free and brought it to his mouth, flicking it open after a second. He tried to answer, but inhaling only made him choke on the rust in his throat.

He could hear the voice of his best friend somewhere beyond.

" _Jim! "_ Bones sounded like he was floating down the river, not coming through a subspace band. " _Dammit, answer me!_ "

Jim tried to say his name, but instead blurbled something wholly unpleasant. His tongue didn't seem to want to work. He took another breath, steadying his nerves and trying to will them to work. "Bones… how's the crew?" He realized that he sounded out of breath, in pain, but not… dying. _Good. He doesn't need this…_

" _We're all fine, but the area where you were lit up like a Christmas Tree."_ It occurred to him, as Bones kept speaking, that he could understand him… but the words seemed to be passing in one burst eardrum and out the other. _"Jaylah's disarmed the bomb and traced the detonator signal."_

"To Cale…" He breathed, blinking slowly as he found himself watching a piece of ash floating in the night air above him before it came to rest on his chest. "Then…" It was getting harder to think. He wanted to close his eyes. "You need to find Diana." He coughed again, dropping his head back against the concrete.

" _Jim, what's wrong?"_ Bones was sounding further and further away…

"Oh, damn, he's still alive." Circe… she was looming over him. When had she gotten so close to him? When had she stopped talking to him?

"I don't think he's going to be for long…" The other voice muttered, crouching over him.

"Tell Diana…" Jim breathed, his heart starting to pound a bit more as Circe's hand began to glow. "You need to tell her…"

" _Whatever it is, tell her yourself, we just found her - "_

"Tell her… Tell her she's here…" Jim was losing words, losing… vision.

And then he locked in on the sight of another person standing over him. Veronica Cale.

They _were_ working together.

He wasn't sure if he'd been able to voice that to Bones or not.

He didn't even know that as Diana took her first breath, buried in meters of rubble, it was as the Goddess of Truth.

He didn't know that because as she took her first breath…

James Tiberius Kirk… took his last.


	57. To Save the World, Part 2: Act I

**To Save the World, Part 2: Act I**

The moment the captain had put out the call for available officers, Nyota had risen from her station. She had been careful to mask the way the world seemed to drop right out from under her when Jim explained that Diana had been fighting with Vanessa and seemed to be buried under rubble. It had not been lost on her that in the end, it was the vessel that carried Vanessa to the stars that ultimately became her prison: The _Argentum Cygnus_ … the Silver Swan… It was as if fate had always pushed them to this point, as if the pieces would have always come to that position on the board.

And Diana had been forced to face her without any of them beside her. Even Jim had been forced to turn his attention to the larger issue.

It had been difficult to consider the implications of that kind of fight, and to be honest, she hadn't wanted to. She had simply followed Spock to the transporter room and found the Doctor also waiting for them. McCoy had his arms full of equipment, but she had no time to ask why before they were beamed down and the three of them met Scotty and Chekov at the coordinates provided.

The moment the transporter beam whirled away, she found herself wondering why the coordinates to Starfleet Command brought them to the garden, faced with smoldering wreckage.

It took her longer than she wanted to admit to realized that Building B, home to most admirals, had been toppled in combat. The bulkhead and plexisteel had begun to melt and curl in on itself. It reminded Nyota of historical records from the wrecked cities after the Factions attacked each other in the Third World War. Buildings looked more like writhing masses of serpents, virtually unrecognizable from their original blueprints.

Was Diana really somewhere in all of that?

She _had_ to be.

The first order of business had been to figure out where she was, and then to get her out.

The fire seemed to be deep within the bowels of the wreckage, smoldering and casting an amber glow along the building. But, Scotty had been able to determine the projected path of Diana's fall from the security footage in the area. She was deep in the wreckage, to be sure, but hopefully not near the worst of the fire.

As it turned out, the reason McCoy had provided so much equipment was not for their usefulness as diagnostic tools, but because they had been flooded with chronitons. As they kept digging and the doctor kept running his scans, he explained what he'd learned about Diana's physiology.

That didn't mean they had any way of getting her out. After twenty minutes of frantic searching, pulling rubble free bit by bit, phasering what they could out of the way, Nyota's hands were raw with scrapes and cuts and no closer to their goal.

With each shift of the rubble, with each barked command from McCoy indicating that he still had no lifesigns, Nyota's head told her that Diana was gone, lost to them forever.

But her heart… her heart _believed_ Diana was still there. And she would hold onto that forever.

She'd begun to lose track of time. As she asked Spock to help her move a fairly large chunk of bulkhead, the two of them tossed it aside. Fatigue had begun to take its toll, however. As they let go of the bulkhead, she tripped on a piece of rebar and fell onto a pretty sizeable piece of plexisteel.

Without hesitation, Spock's hand was around her bicep, pulling her to her feet once more with ease, while somehow managing to be gentle. "Lieutenant, perhaps it is time for you to rest."

She shook her head, turning back to the pile. "No… no, she wouldn't wait if it were one of us… she'd dig for as long as it took."

Spock turned her gently, then pointed to Scotty and Chekov as they debated quite loudly how they could possibly lever the larger pieces of roofing, or perhaps use tractor beams from a shuttle. "Everyone is performing at their best, Nyota." It wasn't resignation, but it wasn't a ringing endorsement. Spock _wanted_ to believe, but it was growing more difficult by the moment to keep hope.

Even when Scotty paused to announce that Jaylah had successfully disarmed the bomb, the reality seemed to be that while they could save San Francisco… saving Diana would be more difficult.

The ground began to rumble beneath them.

The crew scurried back a few feet, watching as the dust and debris started to shudder from some unknown pull. There was a belch of smoke from the far side of the wreckage…

And then the debris began to sink.

"The fire must have burned through a support!" Scotty cried, clearly as dismayed as Nyota felt. "If the buildin' hadn't fallen on her before, it certainly will now."

"Can we stop it?" Spock asked, turning to face the chief engineer with the first real reflection of concern she had seen slip through his measured countenance. "Quickly, Mister Scott!" He said, pushing for an answer.

Scotty simply shook his head as he turned to look at Chekov. The young lieutenant had his hands in his hair, fingers knotted into the curly mop as if he could literally yank the answers free.

"Zere is nosing we can do…" Chekov said, at a loss. "Ve would need sub-zero temperatures to even begin to cool ze bulkhead, but zere's no time!"

There was a crack in the air above them. Nyota turned, looking up for the source of the sound.

Her knees threatened to buckle again for just one, childish moment of awe.

The blue scaled armor had been well-preserved, even if the only visions Nyota had seen of them had been in old historical texts.

The red cape billowed in the wind as the figure came down to hover just above them. That would have been enough to guess.

But when she saw the S on the shield… Nyota knew.

"No way." She breathed.

Beside her, Spock's reaction was less than filled with awe, but nevertheless… surprised. "Admiral Kent?"

Only two men on earth had ever held the name of Superman. And Conner Kent had finally come back to the name and the inspiration it gave. Arms across his chest, standing tall and proud in the air, Uhura had never quite known what to expect from the admiral. And now she knew why. He wasn't an admiral, not at heart. He was a superhero, just like Diana.

"Superman," Nyota said with an honest grin.

"Used to be," Conner said with a bit of a smile. He lifted up slightly into the air a bit more, uncrossing his arms and rolling his shoulders. "Let's see if I can live up to the name, or dad will give me hell." He motioned for them to step aside. "Took me forever to figure this one out in the first place…"

Conner inhaled deeply, then exhaled with a gust of wind to rival the arctic. The crew backpedaled a bit more, stunned and amazed, as the bulkhead was suddenly covered in frost, then iced over entirely. He was _freezing_ the wrecked building. The amber glow of the fire beneath slowly began to dim, then faded entirely.

When he finally let up, not one of them could think of what to say. Thankfully, Conner seemed more than capable of filling the silence.

Superman - _yes, Superman -_ flew over the wreckage and scrutinized it, as if he could see something they didn't. It wasn't until he turned his attention to Doctor McCoy that she realized he probably _could_ see more than they did.

"She's in here. I can see her, but it looks like most of the bulkhead fused together in the fire."

Scotty's expression darkened, a bit lost. "How do we get her out, then? I cannae just lift the bloody buildin' off of her!"

"You can't, Mister Scott, but I can." Superman said with a grin that was much younger than he had seemed as the dour admiral.

Before he could make good on that particular promise, though, the sky lit up across the bay as something exploded near the Golden Gate bridge. They all turned, trying to discern what it could be.

"Oh my dear lord, Jim's over there." Scotty muttered, chilled. "That's about where he thought Anderson was."

"Then, let's not waste any more time." Superman said as he landed beside the wreckage of the building.

He wasn't going to… was he?

Conner's hands gripped at a piece of bulkhead, clearly fused to others below and around it, then began to lift. With a groan, he slowly inched the bulkhead higher and higher. But, it was clear that the feat took greater effort than he had wanted.

Groaning louder, he dropped to one knee so he could brace the bulkhead on his shoulder, then began to stand. Miraculously, what must have been half of the entire roof of Building B started to come up off the ground. Once it was off the ground entirely and Superman was hovering a few feet, he finally roared and threw the whole piece over onto the bare grass between buildings.

When he landed back on his feet, he stumbled until he was on one knee, panting with effort. Nyota made a move towards him, but he held a hand up when he spotted her.

"I'm all right, Lieutenant," He said before he finally stood back up again. "That's just… not as easy as it used to be." It was fascinating and heartwarming, the way his voice changed tone the moment he had put on the suit. It was if she was meeting a whole different person, or at the least, a different side of him. "I'm either out of practice, or old." He shook his head. "I don't like either, to be honest. It kind of sucks."

Nyota's reply faded as she caught sight of a jagged metal wing in the debris. She took another step closer, then frowned as Scotty approached and began to run his tricorder sensor over it.

"Borg. I think." He said. "Poor lass is somewhere down there, too."

"Not exactly, Mister Scott." In the time that it had taken for them to examine the wing, Superman had disappeared down the hole and pulled free the body of one Vanessa Katalepis, or what was left of her. The metal technology had melted all over her. "I'm afraid that Miss Katalepis is gone…"

The image before her invoked ancestral tombs, gilded sarcophagi and masks of emperors. There was certainly nothing living left of Vanessa, but she was preserved nonetheless. Her one organic eye was still open, even though most of her body was cast in steel.

With proper reverence, Superman gently set her down on McCoy's empty cart. The equipment was still in a ring around the hole, as if hoping to draw Diana out somehow.

"McCoy to Kirk. McCoy to Kirk!" Leonard's voice cut through any of the relief or solemn respect that Superman's actions would have provided. The doctor was still turned towards the other side of the bay, even as the glow had faded. "Jim! Dammit, answer me!"

" _Bones… how's the crew?"_ Nyota could barely hear Jim from where she stood, so instead she moved closer. But, it was obvious his breath was labored. Something was off.

"We're all fine, but the area where you were lit up like a Christmas Tree." McCoy glanced over at Nyota, clearly worried and frustrated. "Jaylah's disarmed the bomb and traced the detonator signal."

" _To Cale…"_ Nyota shook her head at the way Jim's voice was fading. _"Then… You need to find Diana."_

"Jim, what's wrong?" McCoy asked. The fact that he was clearly in pain didn't escape either of them.

" _Tell Diana… You need to tell her…"_

Nyota turned to look at Spock, but he was focused with Scotty and Superman on pulling another piece of bulkhead free.

McCoy shook his head in frustration, clearly hoping he could annoy Jim enough to come clean. "Whatever it is, tell her yourself, we just found her - "

" _Tell her… Tell her she's here…"_

"Who's here?" Nyota finally asked, unable to stay silent any longer.

" _They're…"_

"I can hear her heartbeat!" Superman called from the wreckage. "She's coming back!"

" _Working together…"_

And then the line went dead with one singular beep.

"Who's here? What was he talking about?" Nyota asked, turning to look at Bones. "Cale? Did Cale do that?" She idly motioned to the explosion across the bay. "How would he know unless he - " She stopped abruptly as she realized what they had heard. If Jim had been anywhere near that kind of an explosion…

"She's breathing…" Superman said, head tilted as he was clearly listening.

Nyota scrambled back over to the wreckage, shouting down into the debris.

"Diana! We need you! It's Jim!"

And from the darkness… came a brilliant white light.

* * *

Chronitons may have fed Diana's body, but it was the love and faith from those around her that fed Diana's soul. As the crew of the _U.S.S. Enterprise_ held onto the hope that she was somehow, miraculously alive, Diana was nearly overwhelmed by the earnest calls of their hearts. She could still feel her mother's hands on her shoulders, telling her to be worthy of her worshippers, even as Themyscira felt but a dream.

Elysium could not hold her, and it never would. Diana, Goddess of Truth, answered the call of her new family.

She gasped for air in the darkness, greedily seeking the air that her lungs had been deprived for over an hour. Oxygen filled her lungs, chest heaving as the debris shifted around her.

Every synapse fired, every nerve was charged, and each cell seemed to work in tandem to knit broken bones and torn muscle, to restore the blood lost. Warmth spread through her body, from her fingers to her toes.

The power of the gods - of _being_ a god - flowed through her until it could no longer be contained. She had felt the lightning before, she had channelled it within her and around her. But, even when she had released that power within, it had never been with such abandon. The closest equivalent had been when she had pushed through the forcefield on the warbird.

Diana could hear Uhura call to her once more and answered instantly. The lightning coiled around her, then blew the debris still above her out of the way as she shot up into the air like a volcanic eruption.

The remains of the building, like lava and ash, spilled over the edges of the hole created from the efforts to unearth her. But, now, unfettered and unleashed, Diana crashed through the last of the barriers before she soared high into the sky.

Thoughts of everything beyond that moment had left her in the wake of such raw, unbridled power. Her eyes, brilliantly solid white, could see more clearly than ever before, the lightning once wielded by her father snapped around her body and between her fingers. She was not simply a conduit, but now the generator of such holy and primordial fury.

The folly of the gods had been in their inability to cherish and respect the power they had been blessed with. Her father had seen himself as humanity's creator while denying Prometheus his place at the table. Ares and Apollo had seen humanity as their source of power in a constant struggle to grow stronger.

In that moment, consumed by Olympian power, Diana assumed her birthright.

But, she was not a god like her brothers and father.

Diana felt hope. She felt love. She felt the truth.

And the overwhelming relief from her friends below pulled her back from the edge, where she teetered over the precipice of greed and lust for worship.

She was Diana. She was not their ruler, she was their friend.

Inhaling deeply, the cold night air finally cleared her mind enough that she could hover back down to the others. The wounds she had endured in her combat with Vanessa had disappeared, and even her armor had been knitted back together in nothing short of divine will. Even as she slowly sunk back to the ground, Diana found herself struggling to clarify the world around her.

Once her feet touched the ground and she found herself faced with Nyota Uhura… the last of that brush with the greater connection to her divinity faded to almost background noise. Her empathic nature had always been fairly in tune, and she had honed it through the years, but now… the floodgates were open.

Uhura's relief was so palpable that Diana crossed over to her and pulled her into her arms, hugging tightly. Nyota's grip was just as tight, desperately grateful. "You scared all of us…" She finally breathed against Diana's shoulder before pulling away. That relief and gratitude held a dark edge to it, one that seemed strangely… unnecessary to her. She couldn't place why it seemed so strange until Nyota turned towards the bay, motioning to a wrecked area near the Golden Gate bridge. "But, Jim..."

Diana pulled away, her smile fading to a frown as she took a few steps in the direction of the carnage. That wasn't from the Silver Swan. She knew Vanessa's soul was in Elysium.

Jim was… Gone. But… _not_.

She had no idea what she was sensing, but she knew definitively that Jim Kirk was dead.

Yet the truth was that his soul was… not.

"Jim…" She breathed, confusion flickering across her features as she tried to reach out with her new awareness. If she stretched her senses more, perhaps she could…

"I can't hear his heartbeat, but you know, it's been awhile since I've had to listen that closely." Even before she turned to face him, she heard the Conner Kent of her younger days. That dour, severe and worn down admiral had disappeared from his voice. Instead, she half-expected him to tell her he needed her to cover his patrol so that he could go surfing and drag Tim and Kara with him.

To see him in the same Kryptonian armor as his father was enough to make her smile. The way his mostly gray beard had a little bit more black in it once more made her grin. "I thought you were in Starfleet because the world didn't need Superman anymore," She teased him gently.

Conner smiled a bit, although it was a bit of levity in the midst of that dark foreboding that told her that Jim was gone… and she _should_ be mourning. "Yeah, well, Kirk pointed out this wasn't the kind of problem that an admiral needed to solve. It's the kind of thing that…" He shrugged a bit. "Would've had the Justice League." He sighed a bit. "Just sorry it took me so long."

She smiled, tilting her head a bit as she looked him over with her godly senses. "Why am I not surprised that Jim talked sense into you? He's the only person I know more stubborn than your father." Diana knew that the captain would find that profoundly satisfying, and he'd probably be insufferable about it for quite some time. "When this is all over, I promise not to let him hold that over your head… too much."

Conner didn't seem to find the humor in it. In fact, he furrowed his brow with an expression all too much like Kal-El, then reached out to rest his hand on her shoulder. "Diana… did you hear what I said?" When she didn't reply, still too focused on the way that she could sense the Truth within him. There was a reason why he had seemed so much older on the _Yorktown_ … He _was_.

"This is amazing…" She breathed, as if he had never asked the question. Diana reached up to gently brush his cheek. "I see it now. I never realized it before, but the Kryptonian materials in the suit… they store sunlight. You and Kal-El… you both have aged because you were no longer near the yellow sun. But, it's started to restore you - "

Conner took her hand in his, taking a step back. "Diana, I don't know what you've gone through. You're different. But… I can't hear Kirk's heartbeat. Jim is dead." His words were true. She had already felt it once before.

Diana stood a bit taller, turning to face the bay again. He was dead. His body was gone. And yet…

"There are no doors which I cannot open…" She muttered as the last piece of the puzzle slid into place. For all of her life, Diana had seen death as so final, so tragic. Even with her hopes of Elysium, she had never thought she would see those she loved again. But, now, she could tell that something was _different_ with Jim.

"What?"

Diana turned back to him. "He's not gone. That is the Truth. I don't understand how, but… something… or someone is at work." She knew, somehow, that it was not in denial or delusion. She simply _knew_ that Jim was not lost.

"Oh, someone's at work, all right, Diana…" Circe's presence was felt by everyone, not just Diana, long before she appeared before them. Her voice seemed to carry in the wind along with the spine-tingling sensation of her sorcery. "Just not who you think."

Diana turned, more than grateful that her mother and aunt had been there to provide her much-needed advice. Unfortunately, it didn't soothe the hot coal of anger and concern that had settled in her stomach. Staring down the woman that she definitively banished from Earth in the 2020s had brought her back to the stark reality. In fact, the moment she locked eyes with the witch-goddess, that sense of godly awareness seemed to lock in as well into a stable sense of background static.

The thoughts and feelings of the crew behind her, confused and worried, possibly mourning their captain, faded into the background so that she could instead provide her full attention to her enemy.

"I banished you from this earth," Diana said, hands clenched into fists. Her shield was somewhere across town, and her sword was still in the midst of the rubble. The haze now gone, she was starkly aware that in facing Circe, she would be doing it without the sacred relics of the gods, save for her lasso. "I was very clear on my terms. You should not be here - "

A peal of laughter escaped the sorceress, who seemed all too amused by Diana's choice of words.

It was Doctor McCoy from his position several feet behind them who said what she was thinking. "Oh, that's comforting. Maniacal laughter is surely the sign of a mentally balanced individual," The sarcasm rolled off his tongue with ease. He didn't even seem fazed when Circe's laughter faded and she turned her attention towards him.

"Oh, I can assure you I am _absolutely_ sane, Doctor McCoy." Circe made a wide arc around Diana and Conner, clearly attempting to get a better view of the medical officer. Even having Superman block her view didn't deter her from continuing. "But, I just find it so highly amusing that Diana would be so foolish as to bring up the very reason I'm here."

"What are you talking about?" Nyota's confusion was mixed with the raw sensation of fear and barely held back grief. Diana could tell she was barely holding onto her self-control. Her heart was screaming Jim's name, hoping her best friend was somehow still alive.

"Diana was right, my dear little polyglot." Circe reached up, weaving a spell in one hand. "She was incredibly clear on her terms."

Immediately, Diana lifted herself off the ground, hovering so she could be level with the dark magic unfolding in the air.

It was only when Circe completed the sigil that Diana realized it wasn't an offensive spell. No strange words had been uttered from her lips. She was only using it to show her… something.

"See, the banishment was incredibly specific." Circe clapped her hands together and then pulled back, a glass-like, murky orb in her hands. The insides swirled, as if smoke was caught in the smooth sphere. "In fact, maybe you'd like to hear it, Diana. After all, two centuries is a long time for such a simpleton like yourself."

Diana's own visage came into focus within the smoke, then her own voice echoed around them. _"Until no god's foot may touch the earth, I bind you and banish you from Man's World, from the land of the Olympians! So long as one of my people calls Earth home, you may never return!"_

Those had been her words, many years removed but an honest spell and proclamation. At the time, Diana had been sure the only reason it had worked was because Apollo and Athena supported her.

The orb in the witch's hands cracked, then disappeared in a cloud of smoke. "You were _very_ specific. For as long as one of your people calls Earth home, I could never return."

Diana's expression flickered with real fear and concern as she realized the folly.

It was Spock who voiced it, no doubt thanks to his uncanny ability to recall and store information. "When the Olympians left Earth in order to forge new sites of worship, the terms were no longer valid and you were able to return."

"Precisely." Circe turned her attention to Diana, sneering and drunk on her own arrogance. "I could have come back anytime I wanted to after you abandoned the planet."

"So, why didn't you?" The authority in Conner's tone was every bit the Superman. As was the deeply buried concern that he felt some responsibility for her return.

"Oh, please. Why would I _ever_ come back to this abysmal rock?" Circe scoffed, turning to look down at the _Enterprise_ crew like ants on her shoe. "On Earth, I am a _joke_. They only remember me for my brief time with Odysseus. No one remembers when I unleashed Medusa, or set the Hydra upon New York City." Circe stared down young Pavel Chekov, even as he managed to keep from flinching away. "Mortals have such _short_ memories."

"And they are blessed for it," Diana said, careful to keep her tone even, but certainly not hiding the fact that she would not allow Circe any closer to the crew. "The suffering you caused to this world _should_ be forgotten. Humanity has never done anything to you, and yet you hate them all the same." Sweeping around in the air to block her view of Chekov, Diana found herself asking the same words she always had, every time Circe had gone down this path. "Why?"

Circe scoffed wordlessly, staring Diana down as if she couldn't quite believe they were replaying the same conversation. "I _deserve_ their respect, Diana. And they will _fear_ me, if they will not give it to me freely."

She shook her head as she allowed herself, for just a moment, to evaluate Circe's motives with a level of clarity she'd simply never had before. Yet, she found that even with the world open to her in entirely new ways as the Goddess of Truth… Circe was still impossible to read. "You want their worship…" Was all she could mutter as she tried to understand the other woman. "But, you aren't an Olympian, Circe. What you ask for is not yours to receive."

Circe's hands rose into the sky, a flare of purple lightning crackling down from the sky into her hands. "Who are _you_ to make such judgements, Diana?!" She snarled, eyes flaring with a bright purple indicative of the same divine power running through Diana's veins. "You claim you never wished to be a goddess, and yet here you are, bathed in the stink of Apollo's cast-off responsibilities! You wanted the power just as much as anyone else, and yet you _dare_ to tell me that I don't deserve it?"

Beside her, Conner tensed, clearly sensing that a fight was imminent.

Yet, Diana needed to understand her. Circe had been powerful on the _Enterprise_ , yes, but she still had thought the woman to be an immortal blessed by Hecate. This was different, primal. And it _was_ divine.

"The Altheans…" She said, realization dawning. "You convinced them you were Hecate and they worshipped you. And somehow… you used magic to channel it as if you were one of the gods themselves." The words rang true from Diana's lips. "This is… dark, perverted. You should not have done this, Circe, it _will_ consume you." It was impossible to ignore the implications of such things. The hubris that Circe had to possess in order to think that this the best course of action would be returned in swift retribution. But… not by Athena. Or Apollo, or any of the others. They had given up on Earth.

Diana could not consider how long it would take for Circe's mania to be her own downfall, nor could she visit that suffering upon the people of Earth.

Drawing herself up higher, the lasso glowing at her side, Diana prepared herself for the inevitable. "Release those who worship you from this, and return to your planet, Circe." She ordered, voice clear and kinder than the woman had earned. "You can still return from this."

"Diana, I promise you with every fiber of my being…" Circe's hands crackled once more as she summoned more power to her, eyes wide with cruelty and glee. "I am _exactly_ where I wish to be."

Circe shot off into the sky, drawing the power in her hands before hurling it back down at the people below.

Diana and Conner moved as one. Wonder Woman shot upwards, bracelets connecting so she could take the magical blow from Circe in its entirety. Behind her, she could hear the distinct rushes of air as Superman quickly grabbed each of the crewmembers and sped them to safety.

That was about all Diana could hear before the electricity and divine wrath of Circe coiled around the bracelets and down her arms, lancing straight to the bone. She grit her teeth, managed to stay aloft, but the first sensation of pain since her resurrection was more of a shock to her senses than she wanted to admit.

She had taken blows from Ares, from gods and monsters over the years, but this was something else entirely. Circe had stolen something that only gods could wield. And in doing so, she had made it wild and unstable.

All doors may have been open to Diana now…

But, if she wasn't careful, she might see her mother and aunt again all too soon. And something told her…

 _That_ would make her lose Jim. For good.

"I wanted to kill him differently, you know." Circe said, as if she could sense who Diana's thoughts had turned to. When she realized she now had the fellow goddess's attention, the witch tsked mockingly. "Poor boy. It would have been much easier if he had let me carry out my plan. None of your friends would have suffered. I would have just obliterated them all and been done with it, then killed your lover boy. Instead, he bled out like a pig. Such a boring end for a man who thought himself _so_ interesting."

Diana could feel a swell of anger beginning to build, then tried to push it back down. When another blast of lightning from Circe connected with her bracelets, sending another ripple of pain, that sense of calm and understanding she had felt began to fade.

"I was wrong to let you leave the ship," Diana breathed. She had thought perhaps Jim had died stopping Cale. But, it had been Circe. All this time, Diana had been blind to Circe's machinations. "I should have pursued you back to Althea, scoured the planet for you. You've been tracking my every move, and you've somehow brought Veronica Cale into all of this." She shook her head in disbelief. "But, you never needed to hurt Jim."

"I told you I would kill him once you thought you had him back, Diana." Circe replied, clearly pleased at the heartache she had wrought. "I am a woman of my word."

"You are a cruel, heartless woman," Diana shot back, inhaling deeply to help steel her nerves. "And I am _done_ listening to the words you weave."

"What are you going to do, Diana?" Circe laughed as she threw another bolt of energy. "You can't protect them."

Diana sensed the coming presence behind her, then smiled. "We shall see about that."

Duel red streaks lanced through the air as Superman came soaring back from wherever he had dropped off the _Enterprise_ crew. The heat vision arced across Circe's leg, burning and sizzling.

The witch-goddess screamed in anger and pain, clearly unprepared for the joint assault.

She was already losing control of her surroundings, of her power. In a streak of purple light, she took off into the sky, heading upwards and towards the larger buildings.

Beside her, Superman paused and glanced over at her. "The crew's safe."

"If we don't stop her, they won't be for long." Diana motioned to Circe's climb into the air, then shot off like a bullet after her.

Moments later, she could see the blue and red of Superman's armor beside her in the air.

"You know how much Kryptonians hate magic, right?" Conner's boyish humor made him shouting over the wind seem even more petulant than usual. "If she lands a hit on me, I don't know how much help I'll be."

Diana glanced over at him, smiling a bit. "Then, don't get hit."

Conner simply rolled his eyes. "Now, why didn't I think of that sooner?"

As if to illustrate the point, another bolt of tainted lightning suddenly shot towards them as Circe had clearly turned to attack her pursuers.

Gracefully, the two of them spun out of the way, then took opposite paths around a building before meeting up again and beginning to climb higher.

"I've really missed the mentorship," Conner said as he met up with her again. "I forgot how much sarcasm was involved."

"Then, I hope you remember that when you have to get back in Starfleet uniform, Conner." Diana replied, choosing to focus on the hope that they would resolve this and be back in their duty positions in the morning. "It's good to have you back."

Conner glanced over at her, clearly touched by the simple statement. Perhaps, he had recognized it, too. He had let something of himself be buried over the years. Now, it had returned.

She could practically hear Lois cheering her son on from Elysium.

The two of them had no time for more words, however. Another chase, another bolt of lightning lit up the night. It would be difficult to catch up with her, even more difficult to stop her if she continued to spiral out of control.

But, thanks to Jim…

At least she wouldn't be doing this alone.

* * *

Sure enough, the moment Superman had whisked the crew off to safety, Montgomery Scott was standing on the steps of the Federation Assembly building and straining to watch the combat in the sky above.

Of course, his stomach felt rather like the time he shot himself out a bloody torpedo tube from how quickly he'd been grabbed and sped away, but he was coping better than others. In a matter of moments, Superman had brought each member of the crew, sometimes two at a time, as well as McCoy's cart with Vanessa's remains to those same front steps. The poor doctor was now bent over the railing, trying to keep his lunch in his stomach.

Not Scotty. He was watching bloody _Superman_ and Diana soaring into the sky, chasing after Circe, before they vanished around a building. The whole thing dinnae make any sense. It had been one thing to hope that Diana would somehow be alive in all of that rubble… it was another to see her burst out of the ground, completely unscathed and almost disturbingly calm.

Especially about Jim…

"Where did they go?" McCoy asked beside the Chief Engineer. Apparently, once Jaylah joined them through the front door, the doctor had been able to regain his constitution.

Scotty motioned to the building he'd last seen them, just in time for a purple bolt of lightning to strike the roof and crackle through the air. He flinched a bit on reflex, the sound a bit too like a plasma arc with an unstable warp core. "I've never seen anythin' like this. That's impossible. I dinnae even know where to start on all the ways this defies science."

"Yeah…" Bones breathed. "I thought I had a handle on how Diana's abilities worked, but… Diana's reached a whole new level." The accompanying frown from the doctor was one Scotty shared. "Seeing her like this, I'm surprised the Swan even injured her, much less buried her under all that rubble."

Scotty nodded at the idle question. It was a good point. No sign of injuries even though Vanessa had been practically chrome-plated when all was said and done? And Jim was sure Diana was alive.

The realization struck him like a bolt out of the blue. Clapping his hands, he grabbed McCoy by the shoulders so he'd look at him. "Ye're right! If she's doin' this, then there's got to be a reason why the Swan was able to injure her. How much ye wanna bet we can use it to help Diana with the purple people-eater?"

After a long moment, as if trying to piece together what seemed so clear to the Engineer, McCoy's eyes widened. He turned to Jaylah, snapping his fingers quickly. "Chronitons! We need to look for chronitons! And anythin' in Vanessa's body that might absorb them!"

Scotty pulled his tricorder and motioned for Jaylah to follow him.

They might not be able to fly with Diana, but perhaps they could ground Circe instead.

He just had to hope that whatever they accomplished didn't leave Diana at a disadvantage. He wasn't sure how, but his gut told him not to give up on Jim. Diana felt he was fine.

For once in his life, Scotty chose to give himself that bit of a faith in the impossible. After all, that was what Diana had given them all.

Faith. And no matter how impossible it seemed, Jim _had_ to be alive.

* * *

Jim _had_ to be dead.

The bridge of the _U.S.S. Enterprise_ was all around him. His captain's chair was warm, and the sensors were thrumming. Ahead of him, a starscape of infinite potential. Captain Kirk stepped onto the bridge of the _Enterprise,_ surrounded by his crew.

The bridge was running with peak efficiency, with Spock evenly intoning, "Captain on the bridge," as the officers all turned to face him. Even Pavel, who he hadn't seen in months, sat at his navigator's position with that boyish grin and a lust for the next adventure.

Without thinking, Jim smiled and nodded to his shipmates as he strolled down to the chair. He could see himself slipping into the seat, used to the cushions that were just worn enough to be both comfy yet firm.

He heard Uhura giggle from behind him. He was back on his ship. The ordeal was over.

No, the ordeal had never happened. From here, he could see it all perfectly. As Sulu punched in new coordinates, as Janice Rand flashed him a smile from the operations station… everything was running just as it should.

Except, it _couldn't_ be.

Chekov was in San Francisco, hopefully disarming a bomb alongside Jaylah. Along with Spock, Uhura, Bones…

The events had played out exactly as they had when he had stepped into the Nexus before… when he was _alive_. With Napi.

The crew vanished around him. The illusion was broken as Jim threw a pebble into the still waters of the afterlife. Without the crew there to fill the silence, even the sensor beeps sounded like water dripping in the caves he'd spelunked as a kid.

Jim rose to his feet out of the captain's chair, slowly turning to scan the bridge. He remembered where he had been. He had been trying to stop Circe… and he'd seen Cale. He needed to warn Diana. She _had_ to know.

As if he had summoned her into his fantasy, he spotted her at the science station. She stood tall, draped in the same black cloak he had seen her in ages ago, on a boat in the waters of her homeland.

" _Diana?"_ He asked, making his way closer so he could reach up and pull the hood off of her and turn her to face him.

When she turned to face him, he stopped in his tracks. _Not_ Diana.

The woman before him held more severe, angular features, and had dark auburn hair that spilled down her shoulders, only partially hidden by the helmet that had suddenly appeared.

" _No, James Tiberius Kirk. I am not my sister."_ The woman smiled, although there was something so placid in her tone, so wise, that he just… he instantly knew who stood before him. Before he could say her name, she smiled wider and pulled back the cloak so he could see the aegis across her breast. _"You are wiser than you wish others to know, James. Yes, I am Pallas Athena."_

" _The goddess of wisdom…"_ He echoed, looking her over as he had with Apollo once: a mixture of awe, discomfort, and skepticism. Even after all he had seen, even though he was willing to take so much on faith, this was the Nexus. He couldn't trust any of it.

" _Yes. And I am she who is Queen of the Gods in the place of my father."_ Athena's hand reached out into the air. As her fingers began to curl, a golden spear materialized into her grip. _"As such, I am here to fulfill the bargain we struck many years ago, when you were still the man called Steve Trevor."_

Jim furrowed his brow. _"I thought it was already fulfilled. What bargain are you talking about?"_

" _Man cannot escape the riddle of his life. For he only truly sees the shadows on the cave wall. He does not see beyond."_ Athena held her other hand out to him. He couldn't help but feel almost as if her words were being carried to somewhere far beyond his understanding. _"Attend and walk with me, my child."_ Slowly, he crossed the distance between them and slipped his hand into hers. " _Let me show you what lies beyond the cave. "_

Athena tilted the spear in her hand. Jim watched as it suddenly shifted into a golden thread, one that she laid across the palm he had given her.

Her next words should have filled him with dread. Instead, he found himself strangely comforted by them. _"See the Tapestry that is your Life, James Tiberius Kirk."_


	58. To Save the World, Part 2: Act II

**To Save the World, Part 2: Act II**

For the last two hundred years, humanity had been without heroes. In the wake of destruction from World War III, people had had to learn to become everything that the Justice League had wished for them. There had been missteps and obstacles, to be sure, but in the void where once stood men and women imbued with gifts and a greater purpose, humanity had reached for the stars. They had achieved that which seemed so far out of reach in Diana's brief time among Man's World. They had found people's beyond their solar system, peoples that even J'onn J'onzz had only heard of in stories of his Martian childhood.

Humanity had been forced to step out of the shadows because the Justice League had left them.

Because Conner had left them.

There wasn't much that he was ashamed of, _truly_ ashamed, but as he soared overhead a blue streak amongst the artificial lights of San Francisco's skyline... That reminder was most poignant. The gasps of shock and awe that his enhanced hearing caught on the wind shouldn't have been so foreign to his ears.

What had once been words of comfort - _"Look, it's Superman!"_ Had become words of confusion - _"What is that?"_

 _"Someone said that was Superman."_

"I thought he was ancient history."

"I thought he was a myth."

Conner had lost his family, his friends, and he had done what he thought was best. He had pushed humanity to their limits, hoping that they would never need the Justice League again. But, in doing so, he had let his father's legacy, Diana and Bruce's legacies, all fade into the annals of history.

That wasn't what Kryptonians did. Kara had said as much many times. The House of El stood for Hope.

 _And hope never dies, Conner._ He could hear her, even now. Kara had been his age, arriving to Earth later than his father had, but they had grown close over time. It had been a friendship forged in fire, not one easily given, but they had learned that they could be the stewards of humanity. Even as Damian and Tim fell onto opposite sides of how that should be accomplished, Kara and Kon-El - as he had once been called long ago - had been of one mind.

In the end, it had cost Kara her life.

After losing his mother and his father... Conner had buried that symbol in the rubble of the Hall of Justice.

Yet, Diana had uncovered it, as if unearthing a buried temple and clearing it of the sands in the hopes that one day, it would have pilgrims to its altar. That, in itself, had not been surprising. He had figured she would try to pull him back out of the shadows, especially once he had learned that his father was on Themyscira and had been thinking of him. Not only that, he had assumed that Conner would carry on the legacy.

Diana's motivations he could see coming.

He had not expected Jim Kirk to practically throw his suit back in his hands. Nor could he have figured that it would be the captain's last deed. Diana had been strangely unmoved by Jim's demise, but Conner... He couldn't find his heartbeat. He couldn't find anything.

And for that, Circe would most assuredly pay. As soon as she told them how she was working with Veronica Cale. That woman had somehow wormed her way into Starfleet as Conner had been helping shape it, yet she had fallen in with Marcus. The warhawks were beginning to destroy everything he had worked so hard for.

That _had_ to be stopped. They had lost one good man, they didn't need to lose anyone else.

But, the first thing they had to do was to catch the witch and her accomplice.

There would be time for him to nurse his wounded pride and to apologize for staying hidden for so long, for being so wrong. When the fight was over, there would be time to grieve. But, not at the cost of more lives. Diana needed him now.

Conner corkscrewed up into the air as Circe sent another purple bolt of lightning his way.

He raced back to Diana as the two of them soared through the air. From his recollections of her days in the League, she had been fast in the air, but not fast like a Kryptonian.

Whatever metamorphosis she had undergone before emerging from that rubble had changed that. Diana was keeping up with him, quite easily.

"How do you suppose we stop her?" He asked, careful to make sure his voice carried to her and didn't get lost in the wind.

Diana barely turned to glance at him, instead keeping her gaze on the woman ahead of them. She had said something about Circe's Magic being perverse, implying that her use of worship - psionic energy, from Conner's best guess - was unorthodox at best. At worst, it would be wild and impossible to gauge. Not to mention, magic was never his forte. He normally called in Doctor Fate for that sort of thing, but the helmet of Nabu had been lost in the fight long ago.

Luckily, she seemed to have a plan. "Let's funnel her back towards the bridge and flank her. Keep in close, don't let her get too much distance. She's a weaver, it means she needs space for her hands to move and time for her to form words to create her magic." The deeply intimate understanding of that kind of magic came to Diana as if it was nothing. But, her troubled expression suggested she was thinking what they were both leaving unspoken: Circe's lightning didn't need words. What _other_ things had she learned in using another race to feed her?

"Well, that sounds easy enough..." He remarked, agreeing for the most part. "This is seriously out of my wheelhouse, though. When it comes to magic, Kryptonians are just as weak as humans, remember?" Her eyebrow quirked in a way that suggested she didn't appreciate the remark. Of course she remembered. He just wanted to bellyache a little. "Come on, I used to always pass magic jobs off to someone else like Dr Fate or Zatanna."

"Don't worry about the finer points, we just need to keep her away from hurting others." Diana turned to look at him once more. "It is our duty to protect the earth, Conner. Believe that you can and I swear to you... We will."

It had been such a simple statement. But, with Diana... They always were. Who was she? A Seeker of Truth, she would say. A Believer. What did she want? Peace. Love. Hope.

Few words, but with it, she could move mountains and stir souls.

"Then, first thing's first." Conner looked towards the bridge half a mile away, then used the enhanced vision he possessed to look even closer. He could see the people fleeing, the shuttles taking off. "If we want to flank her, we should do it before the bridge. The evacuation is taking too long."

"Define 'too long'," She asked as Circe glanced back at them in the distance. The witch's hands glowed bright with that same lavender light before several smaller bolts of lightning shot towards them.

Conner scowled and dove low to avoid them, cape billowing in the wind as he narrowly avoided the last few bolts. "Evac of the city should take - at max - fifteen minutes. It's been 25." The math in his head wasn't proving out. Even if he gave it a margin of error for a deactivated shuttle, maybe two...

"It must be Cale." Diana answered for him. "If Doctor Cyber was working with her, then it's possible she disabled shuttles."

"Then we just need to buy Starfleet security time." Looking around for a point to divert Circe to, he spotted a park, motioning that way.

"That should be easy enough. We only need to distract her," Diana replied.

"How do you suppose we do that?"

The smile on her face should have been answer enough, but as he had felt many times since her return, his heart skipped a beat at her response. Diana had a way of making old men feel young. Always had. "Do what you do best. Talk."

Invoking Superboy's spectacular ability to run his mouth? Definitely made him feel young again. As a young teen, trying to emulate his father's skill and heroism, he had made a reputation for being the most obnoxious of the sidekicks. Diana knew that all too well. How many times had he actually tongue-twisted Mister Mxyzptlk to send him back to his realm?

If Diana wanted Circe distracted, then it was most certainly a job for Superboy. He just had to hope that in becoming a bit of an older curmudgeon, he could recall his quick wit.

"It's been a while…" He said, unsure.

Diana simply quirked an eyebrow at him. "You've been going toe to toe with the admiralty since it was created. You can handle one hot-tempered sorceress."

The boyish grin on his face probably knocked years off of it, but her words had done the trick. Conner closed the distance between himself and Circe, then focused his vision. The heat shot forth like a laser from his pupils towards her.

This time, Circe was prepared. She turned just before the beams could have connected to her back and blocked it with some sort of energy shield. It made her stop flying forward, however, so he kept it up. The heat vision continued to pound at her barrier as Superman took up a solid position in front of her. He didn't have to hold it forever, just long enough to get Diana over to him.

He wasn't able to buy _quite_ that much time before Circe threw a ball of her spell energy towards him. He had to break visual contact to dodge, fully expecting her to take off again towards whatever location she had seemed safe for her purposes.

Instead, she stared him down, building another round of magic to fire his way. He had only fought her a handful of times in his youth, and most of them had been brief encounters before Diana had subdued the witch or her minions. Faced with her now, he couldn't help but feel as though he'd been brought to heel before a childhood nightmare.

"I suppose you think I should be impressed that she pulled you out of retirement," Circe snarled at him, the orbs glowing even brighter in her hands. "Wearing your daddy's suit and everything, as if you're even close to the real thing." There had been a time when words like that would have hurt him, brought out the unbridled temper of a young man trying to step out of his father's shadows. But, that had been centuries ago. Before he'd spent decades in the Justice League and Starfleet. "Nothing but a cheap imitation."

"Funny," Conner said, smiling with a flare that his mother would have been proud of, the kind of zinger that normally made Damian roll his eyes. "I could say the same thing about you." He motioned to her unusual attire of the Greek chiton with spiked heels. "You're like a bad Halloween costume model, not a Greek goddess reclaiming her destiny."

If there was one thing he could do, it was rile hot-tempered people up. Circe took the bait, hurling the two orbs of energy his way with a roar. The ancient Koine words followed, suggesting that she was going to give him more than just her borrowed worship from the Altheans, but her old-fashioned magic as well.

He ducked away, although not with the grace or same speed he had in his younger days. He turned to watch, checking quickly to see where they would fall. By the time he tracked the orbs to their point of impact - an old fountain - Circe was already preparing another volley. _Good._ He had her full attention, so her ego would keep her focused on him.

"I mean," Superboy's easy, dismissive tone had been dialed up to 11 for the first time in centuries. For just a moment, he let himself forget that he was supposed to be more like his father. "Let's be honest: You want to be feared by humanity, but not because you care about what they want. Not even as a battery." He caught sight of Diana streaking below them, clearly working to flank the sorceress. "You're just angry that they still find hope in Diana. That given the choice, they'll always pick her."

"You think I'm _jealous_?" Circe scoffed, but the offense had clearly been taken even through her derisive snicker. " _You?_ The washed up boy scout trying to make up for tanking your daddy's legacy? You _mortals_ and your pea-sized brains. Even your ambitions are miniscule compared to my greater plan."

Conner quirked an eyebrow. "Does Cale know you think she's so short-sighted? Not very nice words for a partner."

Circe paused in her weaving of spellwork. He had struck a nerve, or at the very least, given her reason to cackle from her own cunning. "Veronica Cale isn't my _partner_ , she's a _tool_. Just like her exciting little Silver Swan experiment, and Doctor Cyber's involvement. They're all parts in _my_ play, _my_ ultimate goal! They mean _nothing_!"

"Really?" He asked, his response clearly displeasing her. "Because, everyone you just mentioned has had _one_ goal: to undo everything Diana ever worked for. So, you're _still_ just that sadly obsessed."

" _ **Nihe-LA!**_ **"** The ancient words weaved thought into magic and magic into energy. By playing to her ego, he had pushed her just far enough to admit Cale wasn't important. Circe clearly had greater machinations at play, but it also meant she was getting faster and more impatient.

Conner dropped a few feet in the sky to dodge her blast, but a ball of crackling purple energy followed too quickly for him to dodge.

Using the quickest weapon at his disposal, his heat vision flared and met the ball of energy head on. It dissipated, but not enough. The energy crackled against his suit, passing straight through to his body as if his Kryptonian half had never been present. His father had been weak against magic, and so was Conner. And he hadn't felt pain like that in a _long_ time.

"Sounds a lot like you just want to see Diana's legacy burn," He growled, trying to shake it off. "And no amount of burning our fields is going to make us worship you. We've outgrown threats like yours."

"I am not a threat, I am your _goddess._ And I will be your death." Circe's fingers curled as she channelled energy and raised her hands to the sky.

"You're angry at people who don't even know your name!" Conner said, prodding that dragon once more as it prepared to breathe fire. "That doesn't sound like a goddess, that sounds like a person so consumed with their obsession that they've gone _crazy!_ We don't care about you, Circe!"

" _Enough!"_ Circe howled. The way each fiber and sinew of muscle seemed to snap and draw the energy from the air meant he needed to move out of the way, but he was a little too sluggish to move as fast as he would need to. Nevertheless, he tried. Her voice carried in the wind even as he tried to speed away.

"You are a _fool!_ And I will raze this _entire_ planet until the blood rushes through the streets and draws him back to me! Cale won't have a cent to rub between her fingers when I'm done!" A volley caught Conner in the leg and sent him reeling head over heels before he could try to right himself. Circe had already caught up to him, hitting him straight on with another blow to the chest. "The Romulans will _rule_ this planet and spend the next thousand years razing the galaxy! Each war, each triumph, and he will come crawling back to me!"

Conner buckled and grabbed at her arm, trying to stop her from making contact. Nevertheless, he couldn't help but voice his confusion. " _Him?"_

Circe knocked his hand away with ease, satisfied she was draining him of his strength with each bit of her sorcery. Her lightning crackled, then her fist connected with his chest.

Fire ignited and raced through his veins as he went plummeting towards the ground. The lightning ripped a cry of shock and pain from him. He couldn't focus, couldn't fly… he hadn't felt something like this since the war...

The golden lasso of Hestia wrapped around his wrist and yanked him back upwards as Diana soared past him. Momentarily tethered to her, he took a moment to regain his strength and faculties as Wonder Woman, his childhood hero, his family, his inspiration, pulled him back to safety.

" _Circe!_ " Diana bellowed to get the woman's attention. As she rose to meet the sorceress, the lasso unfurled from Conner's wrist and let him lose.

Superman spun out of the way with a rustle of his cape, just in time to see Diana's fist connect with the other woman's jaw. The two goddesses grappled with each other, lightning snapping at their limbs as punches connected mid-air.

"Dammit, Circe!" Diana grabbed the woman by her wrist and slung her through the air before racing to come back at her like a hawk swooping down on its prey. "All of this?! _Again_?" Like fury incarnate, Diana rained blow after blow down on the other woman with such speed that she couldn't muster another spell, only flee. "You are such a fool! He doesn't love you, he will _never_ return here! You have endangered _billions_ , all for Ares!"

Circe finally seemed to worm her way out of Diana's grasp, kicking the woman with such power that they finally broke apart. Righting herself, Circe's hands moved again to begin her spellwork. Before Diana could come back at her, an orb surrounded the sorceress, clearly to protect herself from further interference.

"You will _never_ understand what we had, Diana! We share a child! And he _will_ return, now that I am finally back on this rock - "

"You _shared_ a child!" Diana finally shouted. From the way her voice broke, it was clear that the proclamation brought her no joy. Even Conner had to take pause. His heart twisted painfully as Diana clenched her hands into fists, as if steadying herself from the difficult truth before them all. "Lyta is gone, Circe…" She finally breathed, the anger gone from her voice for the moment. "You must feel that. Ares will _never_ return here… Or to you. He told me himself."

The wind and the hum of magic were the only sounds that reached Conner's ears as he found himself watching Circe for her her reaction. She had a daughter? That information had not been common knowledge, at least… not by his time in the league. Wouldn't Circe have known when she stepped foot back on Earth? If her child was as powerful as her parents?

The expression of shock, of disbelief, and… _denial_ on Circe's face seemed to drive the point home. Either she hadn't known… or she had chosen to bury that knowledge so deeply that Diana had ripped it clear from her like reopening a wound. Tears streaked down the woman's face as her chest heaved, hands momentarily frozen mid-spell.

"Don't…." The sorceress warned, shaking her head as the grief welled up inside her. For a moment, Conner could understand that profound sense of loss. "You know…. _Nothing_ …" He couldn't know what it was like to lose a child, but he'd lost parents, lovers, families…

"I am sorry…" She offered. "Lyta was an innocent child when I last saw her, trying to live simply, out of her parents' shadow."

Circe grit her teeth, the tears cascading even as she shook her head. "Don't… _pity me…_ And do _not_ say her name…"

Diana knew that the blow she had struck had been true, and had been quite painful. Her own sympathy and regret were evident on her face. But, Conner knew her. She was hoping she could appeal to whatever part of Circe had once been a mother, had known love outside of her megalomania.

"Let this go, for her sake."

That plea fell on deaf ears.

"I'm glad I killed him…" Circe hissed, voice shaking along with the rest of her, barely containing her rage. Conner tensed, every sense on high alert as he tried to predict her next move. But, all of her ire was directed towards Diana. "I only wish you had been there so that I could make you _watch_ as I spread his entrails on the ground..."

The shield surrounding Circe seemed to explode in a burst of power and energy that cascaded through the air. Conner made a move to dodge, but… there was nowhere to dodge that would have been out of the expanding radius.

He heard Diana scream Circe's name, but then the wave came. Conner went tumbling back down towards the surface as the wave hit him, then continued further towards the ground.

Not just towards the ground…

The bridge.

Circe's cascade of energy moved faster than the already weakened Superman, crashing into the two main support pillars on the closer side of the Golden Gate bridge. Suspension bridges relied entirely on the towers to support the full weight of the bridge, and they could take a lot of abuse, but…

Metal snapped somewhere in the distance.

The steel cables that bound the bridge together were beginning to buckle.

Conner glanced back at Diana and found her once again grabbing for Circe. Their eyes met for just a moment, knowing what had to be done.

He could not fight that battle for her, nor would she ask him to.

Diana nodded briefly at Conner before Circe scratched her across the face, the magic lacing through the sorceress's fingers leaving talon-like marks.

The air cracked around him as Superman turned towards the bridge and promptly broke the sound barrier in the force of his flight. As his abilities provided, he focused his earing on the sound of snapping cables, then used his enhanced vision to spot the central point of failure.

As he reached the center of the bridge, he took hold of several cables in one hand from one side of the bridge, then crossed the distance to the other cables, catching them as they snapped, one by one.

Conner had done a lot of things in his life, but there wasn't much he was proud of, _truly_ proud of.

But, holding a bridge together, his father's shield gleaming in the light of the shuttlecraft trying to evacuate the refugees stuck on the road…

If he survived, he would let himself be proud of this moment.

His hearing, still keyed for the sounds of cables snapping, caught the way that panic turned to hope in just a brief moment for the people down below.

"Look! It's Superman!"

"He's holding the bridge together!"

He could hear the Starfleet officers as they barked orders to get people onto the shuttlecraft, only to stop and gape for a moment themselves.

"So, he _is_ real…"

Conner's father had once said the House of El stood for hope. That it was a symbol to inspire, to give faith in dark times.

 _It is our duty to protect the earth, Conner. Believe that you can and I swear to you... We will._

Conner grit his teeth, forcing himself to expend every last bit of energy he could to hold the bridge together as Diana's words thrummed through his veins.

 _I believe, Diana._ He thought, as the shuttlecraft evacuated from the bridge. In the distance, he could see Diana and Circe disappear from view as their fight took them across the city once more. _We will._

* * *

What Jim was feeling, what he was experiencing…. He didn't know if words existed to adequately describe.

From the moment he touched the thread in Athena's hand, it felt like his mind had been pried open and then… freed. He was both standing on the bridge of the _Enterprise_ , but then he was also somehow, inexplicably, in the driver's seat of his stepdad's old convertible he'd crashed, and yet _also_ in that wreckage of the Golden Gate Visitor's Center while _also_ somehow laying on the beach of Themyscira, staring at a brilliant blue sky while _also_ being in the snowfall in Veld and _also_ -

" _Open your eyes, James."_

Even though he could see that blue sky, clear as day, he was compelled to obey the goddess before him. It reminded him of night terrors he used to have in his first year of command after the incident with Khan. He would dream he was falling through a world of vivid color, but that his eyes were closed. Over and over again, he'd try to open his eyes, but could barely force them more than to slits. It would only be when he woke up that he realized… he couldn't open them because he had been _asleep_.

Jim opened his eyes and the myriad of images from the two lives he had lived vanished. In its place stood the goddess, and behind her, a chamber that seemed to go on…. Forever. The Temple of Delphi, only…. Infinite.

Along the wall, stretching as far as he could see, was a woven tapestry of every shade and color he could imagine. And he _instantly_ knew what it was: the tapestry that the Fates wove people's lives into. From a religious perspective.

Some days, he felt like a Starship captain, and some days….

Some days he was sure that science would never be able to explain everything.

The thread in his hand shimmered, then ebbed and his stomach rolled uncomfortably. He could hear voices echoing, calling his name… no, not Jim. He could hear Chief and Sammy shouting for Steve… _The tarmac…_

Jim took a deep breath and forced himself to look up at the goddess again.

" _I apologize that I could not tell you any of this sooner, show you the Truth of our bargain, but the time was not right. You had to make choices of your own accord, without understanding. You had to be willing to take actions based on faith and love."_ Jim's confusion must have been obvious, but Athena took it in stride. _"When we met, I knew then that Diana would be different. She did not require worship as we did, no belief. When the names Minerva and Athena eventually die from the lips of those once knew me… I shall be gone. Into the sleep of all dead gods, amongst the fields of Elysium. But, not Diana. Because she has never known to need worship, she will be everlasting. Which means, she will always be lonely."_ The goddess reached out, slowly resting her hand on his as the very real memory of his full conversation with Athena in the bar in Veld finally locked into place. " _Unless she has you."_

He could remember the way the beer tasted, the way the bar always seemed just warm enough to escape the biting cold outside. He also remembered the longing, the way his heart had been stuck between comfortable anticipation and aching for Diana to walk through that door.

" _I didn't just ask to come back to her."_ He said, finally recalling the way he had met Athena in an afterlife before Jim Kirk. _"I asked to stay with her."_

Athena smiled, then motioned for him to look past them both. _"Attend and walk with me. Let me show you."_

The two of them began to walk down the chamber, following the thread in Jim's hand. With her free hand, she motioned to a glittering gold thread that tracked through the tapestry. He instantly knew who it belonged to.

" _As you can see, Diana's thread has already shown brightly, a brilliant hue amongst an otherwise colorful but muted tapestry. But, it will never be cut. When she wishes to leave this world, the world of men, it will be because she wishes to. But, I desire a greater purpose for her. One she cannot do alone, simply because she is a creature of love. She born of love, she deserves it, and it would be unwise to ignore that._

" _So, when you asked me to see her once more, I knew that the pain of losing you would be too great. To ask her to endure that a second, or third time, as wheel kept turning, would be cruel. Therefore, we struck a bargain."_ He could remember setting his mug of ale down, telling Athena he was willing to do whatever was needed. " _Yet, in order to fulfill it required time and power I did not yet have."_

" _How much time?"_ Jim asked. The Nexus didn't have time as a construct. He had no idea how long he had been waiting.

" _It took approximately 310 years after your death as Steve Trevor. The day we finally struck our bargain, Diana had been gone from Man's World, but my father had finally passed the power he once so richly sought over to me."_ Athena rose her hand once more. From behind them, Jim felt wrings brush at his hair just before an owl alighted on her gauntlet. _"And as I am now Queen of the Gods, I could do that which only my father once could."_ Her footsteps slowed until they both had come to a stop. Before them, he recognized the three women before him from even a basic knowledge of Greek mythology. _"I could command the Fates."_

" _Huh."_ Jim's response was one part disbelief, and one part resignation that this seemed par for the course.

" _We did not simply pull your thread from the tapestry: that was simple enough. Instead, I had the Fates respin your fiber to that of stronger stuff. Yet, like a blade, it had to be hewn. Melted and reforged as necessary."_ With the care of a physician, Athena gently extricated the thread from Jim's grasp and held it up for him to scrutinize with her. " _Your death on the Enterprise allowed us the opportunity to build you stronger, to make you more wise in anticipation of your destiny."_

 _Khan…_ Jim glanced up at her, brow furrowed. He had spent years wondering how much of his darkness, his own self-doubt, had been because of Khan's blood. And now, the goddess of wisdom, Diana's _sister_ \- or at least, his dying mind's manifestation of her - was telling him that he had been made more wise because of it.

" _When you came to Elysium, I needed you to exercise faith. Faith that even in a mortal life, the love you and Diana shared would be strong enough to last. So, I allowed your former self to appeal to you as needed. And when you emerged, you were nearly ready. We had cast you into the flames once more."_ He remembered the way he'd asked Steve about the deal they had struck. His former self had been very clear that Jim just needed to go back to Diana. Yet now, he knew the truth. There had been more needed of him. _"You had to be willing to cast your past aside. For what is in store for you is a great gift, but comes with a heavy burden."_

He found himself looking at his thread even closer as she spoke. The blue hue was vibrant, but as Athena continued on, he found himself drawn to gold flecks, like stray bits of wool.

" _We spun you… into that of a Champion. But, like Heracles, you must first be consumed by the flames in order to ascend to Olympus."_

Wait…. Did she mean… Jim glanced up, the question on his mind, but he couldn't think of how to voice it.

Athena seemed to already know, and she was smiling, beaming with pride. " _In what you did, stopping Circe from killing all of your family and most assuredly stopping Diana from ascending…. Has led you to die in the service of a god."_ Athena's owl flapped its wings, then suddenly fluttered over to Jim's shoulder, hooting softly. It felt almost as if the creature was trying to nuzzle him, or…. Groom him, maybe. Or, as his mom said for years, he'd been blessed by the animal's presence. He had a feeling it was that one. " _You have died in the service of Diana, risen Goddess of Truth."_

He had a solid understanding of the common literary tool, the Hero's Journey. He'd just never thought he'd be living it.

" _For that, you are now her Champion. And your thread is wound as one with hers. For as long as Diana lives, so shall you. You shall never be touched by age, but only be the wisdom that comes with it. "_ Jim's eyes went wide as he followed the trail of his thread from his hand over to the Fates. Sure enough, there was his blue thread…. Twisting with a strand of gold as it was laid upon the loom.

" _Are you saying I'm… immortal?"_ He finally breathed, not entirely sure he believed the thought, but couldn't help entertaining it. Bones had been sure he would have proven Diana was mortal, but in all of his research, he'd come up empty-handed. And while all of the thread before him _had_ to be a metaphorical representation of something greater…. It seemed all too real to pass off. _"But, I'm already dead."_

" _To the gods, there are no doors which cannot be opened."_ Athena simply remarked. " _Humanity needs Diana. But, not me. Because, they do not need gods to rule above them. They need gods to guide among them. The Kryptonians…. Diana… and now do not need gifts of speed or flight or 'power', you need only your mind and the luxury of time."_

The owl fluttered off of Jim's shoulder and into the air. As it did so, the temple faded away around them. He found himself standing in the wreckage of the visitor center again…. Staring at his body.

" _Take the gift and be what she needs. Be the voice of humanity amongst the clouds, and the two of you will take humanity through many trials. And you will succeed. "_ Athena walked closer to Jim's prone body. She waved her hand, and suddenly he found himself staring up at her. He was back… in his body, but… he didn't feel pain. _"There will be enemies, dangers that you cannot know… but together, you will conquer them."_ Athena held out his hand, as if all he needed to do was reach out and take it.

Jim _breathed_.

Coughing, he stared at her in confusion as his body suddenly reacted with great prejudice from the abuse it had been put through. Yet, Athena still stood there, waiting expectantly for him. Jim forced his hand up from its limp position on his stomach, desperately trying to reach the goddess's offer of assistance.

" _Attend and walk with me, my child, and I shall impart to you my Divine Wisdom."_ Just a few inches more… " _For I am Pallas Athena. I am she who is now Queen of the Gods in place of my father."_

Jim's fingers brushed hers, then her hand clasped around his. Her fingers slipped down to his wrist, holding firm as if pulling a fellow soldier from battle.

" _I have seen the greatness of Diana."_

Jim groaned as he began to sit up. As he did so, he could feel her hand, a grip as firm as Diana's. He closed his eyes, pain suddenly wracking through him as every nerve and synapse seemed to protest all at once.

" _And I see the greatness in you, James Tiberius Kirk."_

When he opened his eyes again, the fires set by Circe's magic had started to finally go out around him. Twilight was on its way.

Athena was gone.

Jim's hands ran down his stomach, expecting a ripped shirt but only to find a pristine uniform. He inhaled, filling his lungs with air, feeling as though he could run forever. He'd never felt so good in his life.

As he heard a crack of air above him, he barely had time to shield his eyes as the ground exploded before him from an impact. Diana and… Circe.

Athena's voice stuck with him even as he tried to pull himself to his feet.

 _Believe in her._

 _Be wise, Champion. Be wise._


	59. To Save the World, Part 2: Act III

**To Save the World, Part 2: Act III**

Circe had gone too far.

The thought was pristine, impossible to ignore, and the only thing that Diana needed to fuel her pursuit.

When Conner had moved to help stabilize the bridge, saving countless civilians and Starfleet personnel alike, Diana was actually relieved. His warnings - however unnecessary - about Kryptonian weaknesses to magic had never been far from her mind. While she still felt an almost subconscious thrum of hope that Jim was somehow, inexplicably, going to return to her, she could not be sure that Conner would enjoy the same blessing.

 _I will bring your son to you, Kal-El._ She thought as she was forced to leave Conner behind, grappling with Circe into the skies. _I promise you, no more lives will be lost today._

The crack of Conner's sonic boom had barely had time to fade before Circe had managed to worm her way out of Diana's grasp and take to the skies again. As much as she wanted to look back, to go help Conner, she knew that she had to trust he would do what he could, and that was all she'd ever ask of him.

Diana took off after Circe, easily catching up to her in spite of the volleys thrown her way. The witch-goddess had grown reckless, rattled by the emotional turmoil deep within. Even now, as she pursued her, Diana had to hope that there was some way she could reach Circe, to stop the madness. But, if not…. She would finish this today.

Right now.

Diana caught up to Circe and caught her ankle, yanking her down to meet her. Within moments, her fist connected with the sorceress's jaw. She shifted to level another blow with her other fist, but Circe was ready.

A shield of that same lavender energy that had plagued Diana appeared. Her next blow bounced off and sent a shock of pain through her, rattling through her bones straight up to her shoulder. She shook it off, pushing off of Circe just long enough to think of her next move.

In her fight against Vanessa, Diana had been constantly more and more drained. But, against Circe? They were evenly matched. Diana was the better fighter, but Circe was full of tricks. Diana felt more powerful than she ever had, but power was nothing if not wielded wisely.

She needed to ground her. Any fight in the sky would allow for infinite opportunities for both of them to recharge. If there was any hope that some part of Circe that had once been a mother, once been just a simple woman asking for her own place in the universe, _someone_ Diana could reason with, then it would only show itself after she had been sorely and soundly beaten.

Yet, Circe would not have her wings clipped so easily.

Circe's mouth moved, forming the old words to create another ball of energy. She was relying on her old magic once more, less inclined to use the lightning bestowed upon her by the misguided worship of the Althean people.

Was she growing weaker? Or simply relying more on instinct?

Diana's bracelets barely had time to deflect the orbs of energy before Circe had summoned a weapon from thin air, the same blade of energy she had used on the bridge of the _Enterprise._ Unfortunately, no sooner than Diana thought to reach for her blade, she remembered that it was somewhere buried in the rubble of Starfleet Headquarters. Most likely, it had melted down, the sacred magic of Athena lost to her forever.

 _Your worshippers await, Diana. Make sure you're worthy of them._

Her mother's advice echoed through her mind, reminding her of why had returned to Man's World. She did not need Athena's blade. Not anymore.

Her bracelets clanged against the psionic blade, only deflecting the blows by the virtue of the magic held within their bearer. If Diana had not been an Olympian, she would have most assuredly lost one of her hands by now. She had to distract Circe, use her reckless temper against her. Only then would she get the upper hand.

"You are consumed with revenge against me, with an obsession to win the love of a god incapable of the sentiment - " Diana ground out as she pushed back against Circe's blade, locking the woman into a show of brute strength. As Circe tried desperately to make her blade touch Diana's flesh, the maneuver was blocked by another push from the goddess. Her bracelets gleamed with the brilliant white light of the gods as the lightning she wielded laced around her every limb.

" _I have had enough of you!_ " Circe screamed in Diana's face, all thoughts of her master plan seemingly gone. Instead, her eyes were wild with hatred and mania. There would be no more reasoning with her. She was determined to win, no matter the cost.

 _She's determined to win…_

The sudden realization that she now had a strategy for defeating Circe nearly caught her off-guard. With her true abilities in place, her role as guardian of Truth had given her a brief glimpse into Circe's psyche with ease. And in doing so, it had shown Diana the path to victory.

Let Circe win. Or at the least, _think_ she had.

There was a very fine line between allowing oneself to lose in a sparring match and truly getting obliterated by the competition. If Diana pulled back too much, allowed herself to be _too_ open, Circe could easily strike her with that perverted lightning and cause true damage. Gods were immortal and certainly invincible to most things, but… only a god could kill another god. And right now, Circe was close enough to being one that Diana didn't want to test the theory on herself.

Diana started small. She pivoted and pushed Circe's blade off to the side, kneeing the woman in the process before pressing the attack. The Amazon roared as she laid down blow after blow, striking any open weak point that Circe had exposed. She wanted to appear overconfident and unwieldy.

Circe took the bait.

As Diana pulled back for another blow, hesitating intentionally, Circe took the opportunity to summon the lavender lightning and threw a bolt against Diana.

The cry of pain wasn't for the sake of theatrics, either. It had truly hurt.

But, the dramatic fall as she started to drop out of the sky, watching for Circe to follow, that was all for show.

Diana tumbled head over heels until she was facing the ground, quickly assessing where they had flown off to. They were still near the bridge, having begun to circle back without realizing. She could see the now barren evacuation zone at the base of the bridge, and beyond it, the dwindling firestorm that Circe had apparently set off. And somewhere, down there among it all…

 _Jim_ …

Her heart suddenly ached, as if someone had reached into her chest and squeezed it, then refused to let go. Something was happening on the ground. And it needed… her.

It was a distraction that Circe took advantage of, although she had no way of knowing that. While Diana found herself momentarily enraptured by some new aspect of her godliness, the sensation that something or someone needed _her_ , specifically, she could barely make out a half-dozen people in Starfleet uniforms reaching that same Visitor's Center area. She knew it had to be the crew of the _Enterprise._

Circe only saw that Diana wasn't recovering from the fall, and with a great cry, the witch-goddess unleashed her unholy power on Diana, lashing her with arc after arc of lightning.

Diana screamed, back arching and body seizing as she was struck, but she somehow kept her wits about her. As she neared the ground, she forced herself to turn and face Circe through the barrage, then grabbed her lasso.

With as much effort as she could muster, Diana threw the lasso, catching it around Circe's ankle and yanking. There was nothing either of them could do as gravity carried them the rest of the way.

Dirt and ash showered over them as they punched a hole into the ground, just feet away from where Circe had tried to kill the crew.

In Diana's plan, she had hoped to be more aware of her surroundings when she had grounded Circe. Unfortunately, she had to admit she was momentarily dazed, although she wasn't sure why. As she coughed dirt free from her mouth, trying to get up, she knew she wasn't hurt. It had been no different than countless sparring matches with Artemis. But, her head still spun. It must have been the sheer power Circe had expended. That dark perversion of the precious gift mortals gave to the gods. Circe didn't deserve it, and she couldn't control it. But, it still left a mark on Diana's bones.

Circe was on her feet first, only to pin Diana to the ground with a bolt of lightning. Cackling, the sorceress sent bolt after bolt against her, and each time, pain and sensation blossomed anew as Diana's senses were assaulted.

She had known there was a fine line, and she had unfortunately stepped over it.

Soon, Diana was breathless, unable to scream, only able to writhe and claw at the dirt in the hopes that she could find purchase and escape. In the crater, she was alone. Conner was on the bridge, saving lives. The crew… were they still safe? And Jim…. he…

"Circe!"

Diana knew the voice instantly. So did the sorceress.

The lightning ceased, and both enemy and ally turned towards the presence.

For a moment, time crawled as Diana took in the sight of James T. Kirk picking himself up off the ground, phaser in hand and bold intent in his eyes. His weapon was trained on the sorceress, the self-made goddess of Althea, but his eyes were on Diana. And his spirit…

His spirit was brighter than anything she had ever seen before.

"You shouldn't have threatened the people I love." Jim simply replied, then fired off a volley of phaser fire.

The first hit caught the sorceress in the shoulder, making her stagger. The rest she took to the chest, relatively uninjured but certainly shocked.

"You…" Circe breathed, clearly disbelieving. "I watched you die, little man. How _dare you defy me!_ " She rose a hand, drawing more of her power from the sky as Diana made a move to stand.

"Cap'n, move!"

Diana felt a surge of hope and relief flow through her as the Chief Engineer of the _U.S.S. Enterprise_ and both his former and current colleagues came rushing through one of the decimated alleys. Jaylah, Chekov and himself all held phaser rifles with modifications that Diana hadn't seen before and they seemed ready to fire.

Without hesitation, Jim ducked out of the way and the trio opened fire on Circe.

The phaser bolts were like that of the Silver Swan, and as they hit Circe, each of them sent the sorceress reeling.

Volley after volley came at the dark goddess, and with each passing strike, her cries became less enraged and more pained. Finally, she fell back and collapsed to her knees, expression still a strange mixture of shock and anger.

"Hold your fire!" Diana shouted, holding her hand up to stop them. Without hesitation, the crew paused, then lowered the rifles as Diana took a step closer to her enemy. Only a god could kill another god… and Circe had exhausted all chances for redemption that Diana offered. Yet, it was not lost on her that had it not been for the faith and determination of Jim's crew, she might never have had the chance to finally put this to an end.

Circe gasped for air, a hand clutching her chest as she clearly struggled to understand what they had done. "What the _hell_ …" She breathed, her voice both a gasp and a growl, as if the very shock she felt betrayed her fury.

"The Silver Swan's weapons were designed to suck chronitons from cells," Scotty remarked, clearly too satisfied with himself to care that he was giving Circe a reason to target him. "So that's why she injured Diana so badly. Figured it would work on you, too."

Circe leveled her enraged gaze on Chief Scott, slowly pulling herself to her feet. " _Bacon_ , I think…" She hissed, a chuckle of sheer insanity escaping her lips. "You'd make good bacon, just like all of Odysseus's little crew… hickory smoked with a couple of eggs over easy..."

Circe had begun to lose touch with reality. It was time to end this.

"You will not harm them, Circe." Diana spoke, fists clenched at her sides as she stood to her full height. All eyes turned to her, including Circe's, as she took a deep breath and revealed just how little Circe's magic had really injured her. "I am the Goddess of Truth, and Earth is under my protection. You will leave this place, one way or the other."

" _Never!"_ Circe cried, throwing her hands out as she attempted to weave another spell.

Diana closed her eyes for just a moment, recalling that sensation of openness and the explosion of power within her. She had pushed it back to the gentle buzz while fighting before, but now, she let herself feel _everything_.

More importantly, she let herself feel the truth in her new family, the people who had accepted her with no hesitation. She felt Uhura's faith, loving and sincere, that Diana was truly her sister now and that she would defend them. She felt Spock's confidence in her and Doctor McCoy's genuine relief that she was alive. She felt Jaylah's passion, Chekov's sheer joy at her presence, and Chief Scott's barely contained admiration.

And she felt Jim. He felt… more than confident. He felt… as if they were in sync. As if he believed in her with every breath.

She inhaled as he did, then felt the wind whip around her as she summoned that great power, the great birthright bestowed upon her by the gods.

Diana opened her eyes and held her hand up to the sky.

The clouds split open as Zeus's thunderbolt came to her hand and arced through her, filling every cell of her body.

The Goddess of Truth moved faster than Circe could react.

Her fists moved in a flurry, crunching bone underneath them as she connected with Circe's stomach. Then, as if in the same breath, she crouched down and swept the woman's feet out from under her and grabbed her ankle in one hand, using it to hurl her into the crater, back first and upside-down.

With a roar of power, Diana summoned the great bolt of thunder within every synapse and clashed her bracelets in front of her. The lightning rushed forward in a split-second. The witch barely had time to get her hand up, a feeble shield flickering to life before Diana's divine power reached her and shattered the magic protecting her. It did more than enough to injure the witch, given that she had not channeled nearly as much lightning back at her as Diana once had to vanquish Ares.

Dazed, Circe had only begun to slide down before Diana raced for her and grabbed her tunic, lifting her into the air. The two of them soared high into the sky as Diana felt the freedom and abandon of her power. Releasing Circe, she only did so in order to pull her lasso and lash it around the woman, pinning her hands to her sides and heading back towards the ground.

Landing, Diana yanked and threw Circe into the ground once, then heaved another blow and did it again into the other side of the crater.

When Circe made no move to get up this time, Diana paused and hauled her up enough to see that she was very much alive, very much conscious, but thoroughly beaten.

And she was now out of chances to spare with the Olympians.

"You are _done_ , Circe. You will never hurt another person again. Now, step back from this course or I will find an even deeper, darker hole to throw you in." Lightning still snaking around her limbs, Diana held the lasso firmly and urged it to shine brightly for her. " _I compel you to tell the Truth_." She said, her voice profound with its divine command.

If the crew behind her had an opinion, they did not share it. In fact, they all seemed to be in awe. They had seen aspects of Diana's divinity, but never known it in its truest form. And to be fair, neither had Diana.

The lasso opened Circe's mind, gushing forward the Truth even more potently than before. Diana's godly abilities had pried her mind open better than the lasso alone ever could.

And what she saw was more chilling than anything she could have imagined within one, single soul's mind. The Borg had been terrifying, but that was because they had been a collective of many minds forged into the Anti-Life Equation incarnate.

But, Circe?

She was mad. There was no end. As if walking down an endless hall, opening the same door over and over only to find the same rooms waiting. There was no grand plan. The "plan" had disappeared in the ashes of her daughter centuries ago. There had only been revenge. On Diana, on humanity, and on…

"You don't love anyone, not even Ares." Diana finally whispered, blinking back a tear for the emptiness she felt in Circe's heart. "There is nothing left in you. You would have tried to kill Ares after luring him back to you because you know nothing but hatred."

"I am a _god!_ " Circe cried, struggling against the lasso. "Who are you to tell me otherwise? I am worthy! I am immortal!"

"You are neither," Diana whispered, holding the lasso tighter. "You are not a god. You are not a primordial force of nature, destined to be timeless. You are a mortal who was once given a blessing, power beyond her understanding, and you have squandered it. And there is nothing left to do for you. You will die." Diana furrowed her brow, pained to see how far the woman had fallen. There had been a time, long ago, when Diana had thought all those who tangled with Ares were simply his pawns. Circe had been closest to his equal, and she had been lost along the way. "This is not your power, and I give it back to those who sent it to you."

Circe's eyes widened in understanding. "No!" She tried to pull away, but Diana held fast as the lightning flowing through her began to travel across the lasso. "Diana, _no! You can't!_ _ **Diana!"**_ Circe's hands began to glow, as if trying to summon the last of her strength to attack.

It was in folly.

The moment Diana's divine lightning touched her skin, the moment it met with Circe's stolen power, an attempt to use worshipful energy where she had no right to it, the balance of the universe was set once more.

Only Diana forced herself not to look away as Circe screamed, consumed in a great conflagration of holy fire and lightning. She had looked away when she had done this to Ares. She would not look away now.

Circe, the witch-goddess, the sorceress of Aeiea and great enemy of Wonder Woman and the Olympians, burned to ash as Hecate's last favors left her.

The lasso went dim and fell to the ground with nothing to hold onto.

"I wish you peace alongside your mistress, Circe," Diana whispered, aware that the knot in her stomach would not disappear any time soon. She remembered Vanessa's words in Elysium, that the Nexus fed the strongest impulses in some, the darkest in others. "May Hecate guide you with her torches to the Underworld, and let us hope the tortures of Tartarus you face are not too like your own making."

At last, Circe's wrath would never visit Man's World again.

Diana had assumed her birthright and taken her first action as the only Olympian to protect Earth. As she turned to face the crew, she felt a sense of purpose and calm that she had never felt before. She was alive. She was divine.

Diana finally understood the ambrosia of the gods. It wasn't the worship, it wasn't the power…

It was the profound sense that the world around her suddenly made sense. That feeling was timeless. _She_ was timeless. And everything, for just that moment, felt _right_.

* * *

Jim had no time to really think about what he was feeling, or how he was feeling. He knew that Diana was in danger, he knew that Circe had to be stopped, and he remembered what Athena had said to him.

He knew Bones would argue that nothing he did was _wise_ , but he had heard the footsteps of his crew approaching before he'd fired on Circe. And he knew that all Diana needed was just a moment. He had no ridiculous notion that he was going to injure the woman with a phaser blast, as he doubted singeing her hair would work twice. But, he had to distract her.

So, when Diana unleashed nothing less than godly fury on the woman, he, along with the rest of his crew, watched in nothing but dumbfounded awe. It had all happened so fast, there wasn't much to be done before Circe had gone up like a horrendous engineering accident.

And then she was gone, and Diana was standing in the crater. She stood like Victory, proud, every muscle prepared for another attack while somehow profoundly graceful.

When she finally turned to face them, her eyes were still that gleaming white he had seen for just a moment before she'd gone on the attack. He had no way of knowing that was the same gleaming white of her eyes when she had rescued him on the warbird and snapped through the force field.

He just knew that Athena's words rang even more true now, but he didn't care.

 _She is the risen Goddess of Truth._

She was already a goddess to him, she didn't have to try. And she was…

"Diana…" Jim breathed, crossing the distance between them as her gaze finally met his.

It was only when she heard his voice, saw him coming closer, that she seemed to remember where she was. The divine lightning travelled down her body and into the ground below, her eyes blinking back to their normal warm and welcoming brown. There was clear relief as she exhaled.

"Jim…" The way she said his name made his heart clench for a moment. Even though she reached out to bring her hands to his face, touching his jawline, his cheeks, as if she knew them all, she was looking at him as if seeing him differently somehow. "You were gone… but, I knew you weren't. I don't know how to explain it. Even though Conner said you were dead… I could sense you..."

Jim cracked a smile, somehow still surprised by her ability to already have a handle on the situation. "It's a long story, but, let's just say I'm going to have plenty of time to tell you about it. " Cupping her face in his hands, he ran his thumbs along her cheeks for a moment before pulling her close. He didn't have the words to express how he felt, and he didn't care who saw. His crew knew his heart better than anyone else.

Diana had gone above and beyond what any person should have been able to do, and for just a brief moment, he had gotten a glimpse of the good she had done and _would_ do. And Athena had given him the chance to be with her. Forever.

His mind was entirely on the present, though. That moment, holding her close, reminded him that he wasn't still lying on the concrete facing an eternity without her. Athena's bargain could be explained later. Right now, he just needed to remind himself that this time, the two of them had come out on the other side of the fires _together._

So, naturally, his Chief Medical Officer, best friend, and resident buzzkill those that moment to clear his throat dramatically and saunter over.

"OK, that's enough," Bones grumbled as he came over to them. While Jim had been perfectly fine to put the world on hold for a moment, that was not in the cards. So, for everyone's sake, he took a step back from Diana and turned to face the doctor with the most casual and mock curious expression as possible. "Before you two forget where you are, we are not out of hot water yet."

"Of course," Diana breathed, that radiant smile turning to a frown as if the clouds had rolled in. "I just assumed that the bomb - "

"Oh, the bomb's already been taken care of," Bones said with a dismissive wave of his hand. "Between Jaylah and Scotty, the two of them worked a damn miracle. That's not what I mean. Cale is still out there."

Jim's stomach turned a bit as he recalled her face. "Shit. She was working with Circe, I saw her before I…" He paused as he realized Bones was looking at him expectantly. _Well…. No real way to avoid it…_ Jim shrugged. "Died." At the near explosive look on his friend's face, Jim motioned to his body with one hand. "Look, Bones, I'm fine - "

"Like _hell_ you are!" McCoy exploded, holding up the sensor for his medical tricorder as if he wasn't sure he would use it to examine Jim or pelt it at his head.

"Perhaps you should let Leonard look at you, Jim," Diana's tone was kind, but he could tell she was doing it to keep him out of danger. He had a feeling that knowing what she was thinking - even on a bare instinctual level - was going to happen a lot more often now. "I will go find Superman and - "

"No!" Bones snapped at Diana with a huff. Given the genuine expression of surprise on her face, not even she had expected him to have such an opinion. "Now, you listen. You two are gonna sit still for one _goddamned_ minute!" Certain he had their full attention, Bones turned and pointed to Jim. "You were _apparently_ dead." He then turned and pointed to Diana. " _You_ are glowing. Clearly, you're not well and you're gonna give me a few minutes to check you both out. Thanks to our Engineering team's quick thinking, the Silver Swan's tech has given me a bit more insight on those chronitons work..." Bones scowled as he began to run his sensor over Jim, then stopped and looked at him. "I checked these tricorders twice. We purged them of chronitons. So why are you _full_ of the tiny critters?"

Jim furrowed his brow and opened his mouth to both protest the impromptu physical and put off the inevitable conversation, fully prepared to use his authority to override his chief medical officer, no matter how good his intentions. Now that he was reminded of Cale's presence, he could afford the lecture later. He needed to find her now.

"Veronica Cale is dangerous, Leonard. It would be best for all of you if you stay here and let me find her... " Diana argued for a moment, only to trail off as something ahead of her caught her attention.

Jim turned towards where she was facing and found himself equally speechless.

Conner Kent…. Was flying. And carrying a Federation shuttle in both hands over his head.

Conner Kent… was Superman.

"Bones?" Jim muttered, unable to take his eyes off of the man who looked even _more_ like his father on Themyscira. "Remind me how long I was out of action?"

"Thankfully," Bones clapped him on the back, as if he could sense the imminent danger gripping all of them had passed simply with the arrival of Superman. "Not that long."

"Uh-huh…" Jim simply replied, not entirely sure he could add anything else to that. He had certainly tried to get Conner to beam down from the _Farragut_ to help them, but he had to admit, he really had not expected the armor and the show of his abilities. Even more uncanny, he couldn't help but remember his first days on Themyscira after his shuttle had crashed. It was in watching Kal do the exact same thing with his own shuttle that Jim figured out the man was once Superman.

Had his words been the reason Conner was in that costume?

Jim didn't even want to feel proud of himself for that one. He was just floored by the very prospect. Somewhere, in the back of his mind, the small-town, do-nothing Iowa boy he used to be was doing somersaults. His opinion of Conner Kent had run the full gamut of emotions: awkward familiarity, admiration, camaraderie, suspicion, distrust, regret that they couldn't get along.

None of that mattered anymore, because he was watching Superman gently put that shuttle down and smiling at Diana in a way that resembled the first time they'd seen each other on the _Yorktown_.

"The bridge has been stabilized. I had to use my heat vision to weld some of the cables back together while Starfleet Engineering brought in replacement parts," He said as he came around, still clearly watching Diana. "And remember what you said about not worrying about the finer points?"

Diana's smile suggested she understood the inside reference to her nephew. Jim crossed his arms over his chest, catching her eye as if to remind her that there were others who wanted to know precisely what they had been up to while everyone else had been grounded.

"Yes, I do," Diana remarked, seeming more like her composed and quietly imposing self and less like a godly force of nature in a barely corked bottle. "I'm glad to hear about the bridge. But, the shuttle…"

"Well, one of those finer points made the mistake of talking loud enough for me to hear while I was watching the shuttles leave." Conner motioned to the aft section of the vessel. A small Kryptonian S shield had been burned into the bulkhead, as if to mark it. "So, I tagged it and had Security flag it."

Conner reached over and knocked twice on the shuttle door, signalling for someone inside.

After a moment, the doors opened and Admiral Veronica Cale was escorted out of the shuttle, flanked by two Starfleet Security personnel. She was already cuffed, but looked far more defiant and confident than Jim was comfortable with.

"Was anyone injured?" Jim asked, more to the security personnel than to anyone else.

"She didn't even struggle. The moment the Admiral hailed us, she didn't bother to fight us." One of the officers replied, his hand still on Cale's arm.

Jim's confusion was plain. Why would Cale have given up so easily? Had they missed something else?

"Most likely because she was expecting the Tal Shiar agents on the Lunar base to assist her with an escape at a later date." Spock spoke up for the first time since he'd arrived, prompting Jim to turn to face him. Leave it to his first officer to wrap up the loose ends. A quick glance back at Cale suggested that he'd been right, too. She had expected a rescue. "I believe Captain Garrovick will have them in custody within the day. All transports were suspended from New Berlin once we arrived."

"Commander, I'd recommend you shutting your mouth with these baseless accusations," Cale said, cool and calm. It was the same tone she'd used during Jim's hearing. It was a tone that suggested she had plans within plans and nothing was going to faze her. "I'm a Starfleet Admiral - "

"You are a war criminal, Veronica." Diana finally said, moving so that she could face the other woman. There was a dark edge to her voice. With the threat of Circe gone, she now could focus on precisely the role Cale had played in all of this, and from Jim's perspective, it was the most insidious of all. She'd been the one orchestrating the bomb, Vanessa, the Romulan infiltration. Circe had just helped her get there.

"Ahh…" Veronica sighed, smiling sourly at the goddess before her. "Diana," She said her name at a drawl, mixed with disgust and annoyance that suggested the kind of grudge that went as deep as her soul. "So good to see you again. I thought you'd well and truly given up on humanity, and yet here we are - "

Diana's hand shot out faster than anyone could react - except perhaps Conner, who didn't seem interested in stopping her - and clutched at her Admiral's uniform at the neck, tugging her closer. "You are a murderer, a traitor, and a liar. And you have been planning this neverending profit cycle of death and destruction for _centuries_." Diana growled as she drew the woman even closer. "You are responsible for _all_ of this chaos. You are just as bad as Circe, and I will end you with the same prejudice so that Vanessa's soul may be at peace and avenged - "

Jim caught the spark of lightning at Diana's hand and instantly knew what she was planning. He sped forward, holding his hands out plaintively. "Diana, don't!"

Diana paused, turning to look at him in confusion. Of course, why wouldn't she? He hadn't stopped her from… vanquishing Circe, for lack of a better term. Why would he stop her from doling out Olympian justice now?

It never occurred to Jim that she'd never actually asked the questions. He'd just sort of… known. Just like when he'd known she was growing tired in the fight. Fleeting moments of connection. "Look, I know it would be fair by your standards to kill her. She's done horrible, unspeakable things."

"And she doesn't care, Jim." Diana replied, her eyes clearly troubled. "She will continue to do them the moment she has influence, Jim. I am within my right to seek justice for my sister - "

"You are, you are absolutely right," Jim conceded, slowly inching closer to her as her hand tightened its grip on Cale's jacket. "But, this isn't just about justice for Vanessa as an Amazon. This is about the people that died because of Vanessa. Hackett…. The countless people who Veronica's eliminated over the last two hundred years to get where she is. It's about her paying for handing Khan the reins to the Augment project with Damian." Finally, he rested his hand on her shoulder. "This isn't a problem for you to solve as a goddess. This is a problem humanity created. It's a problem _we_ need to solve." Squeezing gently, Jim motioned to the admiral's bars on Cale's collar. "She deserves to be held to the Federation's standards. She needs a trial, and more importantly, we need to go through the process so we can track down every last one of her accomplices. And maybe your lasso can help with that, but…" He breathed. "Diana, you kill her, and a lot of people don't get justice. Jaylah never gets to know what happened that night, if there was anyone else."

Diana's grip loosened as she saw the truth in his words, the desire for vengeance slowly fading.

"I lost Chris Pike to her alliance with Khan and with Marcus." Jim said softly, quiet enough that only she could hear. "She's been playing this game a long time, and it's going to take just as long to sort out her influence."

After a long moment, eyes searching his face, Diana nodded and straightened a bit. "I agree," She said softly, the steady tone finally returning to her voice. But, she wasn't done. Instead of releasing Cale, she turned to look at the woman. "But, first, you will tell me why you did this. No lasso, I won't bother. I know you, Veronica. You've never lied to me, just used the truth to your advantage. So, why this? Why now?"

At first, Cale just pursed her lips and remained silent. Jim couldn't help but wonder if she would choose to stay silent just to spite Diana. But, as it turned out, she had been measuring her words for maximum effect. "Because some people just aren't like you, Diana. Some of us don't care about the little guy. Some of us came from nothing and built something, only for some pretty little love-and-justice-speech-wielding creature from another naive world to sweep through and tear it all down. And I was building back up to something. Circe and i struck our bargain before the Medusa was unleashed on the city. And I knew, no matter where you banished her to, she'd find a way to come back. Because she is a simple, _stupid_ creature and I could use her vendetta to my advantage. And you couldn't stop me." Cale took a step forward, eyes hawk-like and severe. "You were gone. I could finally outlast you. And I have, because you will _never_ find all the things I've touched. Starfleet will _always_ know I was there. I'll live forever, and eventually, someone will extradite me or let me out of a penal colony for good behavior and we'll be right back to square one."

Jim's temper had gone from non-existent to a steady simmer the longer Cale went on. She hadn't just wrecked Diana's life since arriving back to society, she had been responsible for Pike's death, for the same kind of jingoistic crap Marcus had used to nearly start a war with the Klingons. And when Diana was close to brokering peace, her agents in the Tal Shiar had ruined that, too.

Diana seemed to have found something else to hold onto, both figuratively and physically. As Cale finished her rousing speech, determined to spit in Diana's face until the end, he noticed Diana's hand move. Her fingers went from the collar of the jacket long enough to unbutton the top button and pull free the grand pearls of Calypso that she had pointed out to Jim.

"Then, I see no punishment more fitting than for you to watch us tear apart your legacy piece by piece, forging unity in its wake and knowing that you will have to answer the call of the Ferryman sooner than you wish." Diana gripped the necklace tighter and pulled.

The pearls snapped from Cale's neck and went scattering across the grass.

Veronica Cale went from calm to panicked within moments, quickly trying to pull free of the security officers. "No! My pearls! Let me go! I'm an Admiral, you let me go and you will retrieve my pearls this _instant!_ "

Jim glanced over at Conner, then caught the way Kent nodded at him, as if to say he could do the honors. After all, Admiral Kent wasn't in uniform, he was in armor as a symbol of the Justice League.

"Admiral Veronica Cale," Jim said, settling into the steady rhythm that he gave all manner of orders and captain's logs in as he trained his phaser on her. "As you have been accused of treason, murder, conspiracy and a myriad of other charges, I hereby take you into custody and will have you escorted to Starfleet Command…"

* * *

Veronica Cale was in custody, ironclad evidence at the ready to put her away in a Federation Penal Settlement. Circe was forever gone from the mortal plane. As she was not a true Olympian, she would not sleep the dreamless slumber of gods, waiting for the right soul to come by and spark life back into her. She was in the hands of the Nexus now.

The Tal Shiar agents were apprehended shortly after Conner and Diana finished cleaning up the various areas of town that the Swan or Circe had damaged. It was hardly perfect, but at least they could say that the majority of the debris and anything of immediate danger had been handled.

Diana should have been exhausted and ready to sleep.

Instead, she was still in the strange sense of near-euphoria that each expenditure of power gave her. Something told her that, with time, the sensation would fade. Already, spending time just with Conner for a few hours had helped her begin to force that sense of profound understanding to move to the background.

She didn't quite understand the gift given to her by the gods. It was one she had certainly never asked for. Yet, her mother had been sure this was Diana's destiny. Whatever that meant, she would face it with certainty, but with humility. She had never learned to see humanity as lesser beings. She wouldn't start now.

Now, she was waiting outside the Federation Assembly building as Conner headed inside to change back into a Starfleet uniform and to retrieve Jim from the inevitable moebius strip that was an Admiralty board questions. It would take time to sort everything out with Cale and none of it would happen as the sun was rising.

"So, I guess your tenure as Superman makes you uniquely qualified to rescue people from both buckling bridges and blustering admirals," Jim was saying as he and Conner exited the assembly building.

"Are you kidding? Remind me to tell you about the time I actually out-sassed Metallo." Conner almost sounded like the boy she had once known. If it hadn't been the fact that there was still quite a bit of salt and pepper in his hair, she would have thought she'd gone back in time. The yellow sunlight of Earth had not been enough to restore Conner's youth, but when combined with the natural properties of the Kryptonian armor, it had lifted a couple of decades off of him. It was enough to show her that both he and Kal-El had many years left in them, if they only wished for it.

The bit of easy wit and casual tone brought a smile to Diana's face as she turned to face them. She was still in her armor, a bit dusty and sooty, which meant she was a bit of a motley addition to the duo in their clean-cut uniforms. "Gentleman," She said with a nod.

"Your Majesty," Jim said with a grin, then paused. "Actually, can I still call you that? Or Angel? Divine Goddess just seems…. Kind of over the top." The wink he gave her almost made Diana forget that Conner was standing beside him. He'd been in an unusual mood before Cale had arrived, and he had continued that notion.

"You can save the pet names for when I'm not around, if you don't mind, Kirk." Conner remarked, crossing his arms over his chest. The smile on his face suggested he not take the reprimand too seriously.

"Of course, my apologies…" Jim rattled off with ease, looking perfectly contrite before he added, "Admiral Superman."

" _Kirk._ " Conner warned with a severe look.

"How did things go with the admiralty board?" Diana asked, choosing to pivot both of them back to the reason they had been gone. She had another matter she needed to discuss, but wanted to make sure that it would not seem trivial against the greater political sphere. "Have they accepted your testimony regarding Veronica?"

Jim took a deep breath, taking a moment to consider what he'd just done, then answered, "I think so, yes. They're going to want all of us to give detailed statements, show them how we got the evidence we did, and anything we can corroborate, we will want to. But, they at least felt there was enough to suggest her involvement in the explosion of the research facility and to make her a person of interest in Hackett's death." He shrugged. "It didn't help that she fled the scene."

"So… what comes next?" Diana directed the question more to Conner, since he was Jim's commanding officer and her own Federation liaison. It was strange to think that she could fall back into the old patterns of compartmentalizing her "superhero" life with her "civilian" life. They were just much closer in nature now.

"Well," Conner tilted his head a bit from side to side before answering. "Given the pace that Starfleet will want to investigate this, it will probably be a few weeks before we can send the _Enterprise_ back on its tour, but it's also too long to warrant keeping the crew here if they don't want to be." He shrugged, much like Jim just had. So much youth had returned to him, in no time. "You're all free for the next couple of weeks. I'll send the communique when we need you all back here for the first hearings."

His words were met with honest relief on Diana's part. She didn't bother to hide it. "Would you be willing to travel with us?" She asked, only to catch Jim's questioning glance. She knew that technically, she was overstepping, but she had a feeling Jim would not disagree. "I have something that must be done, and I would very much like you to come with me."

Conner's eyebrows rose in surprise. "I… Of course, Diana, whatever you need. Can I ask what you need to do?"

Diana glanced over at Jim, then motioned for them both to follow her. She made her way over to a hovercart that had been used by Chief Scott only a few hours ago. On the cart lay Vanessa's entombed body, what was left of it.

Reaching out, she ran a hand down the smooth metal cheek of her fallen sister. As much as she wanted to lose herself in Jim's arms, to hear the still untold yarn of his miraculous return from the dead…. Promises had to be kept.

"I would very much like to go home."


	60. To Save the World, Part 2: Act IV

**To Save the World, Part 2: Act IV**

 _Stardate 2264.115_

Jim wasn't a fan of funerals.

Not that anyone ever was, but Jim's life could be codified and marked by the funerals he had attended.

Maybe it was that the first pictures his mother had of him were not with both of his smiling parents, but rather with various officers in their dress uniforms at the memorial service for the lost crew of the _Kelvin._ Fellow Starfleet peers had told his mother that Jim had been the most relaxed baby they'd ever seen at such an affair.

Death only followed him from there.

As a completely rudderless do-nothing in a town of kids going nowhere, Jim lost a number of friends before he even graduated from school. Then, his tenure in the Academy was bookended with the destruction of a good portion of the fleet and Vulcan by the _Narada_. At the time, he had thought nothing could be worse than the injured, the dead and the mourning.

And then he had to give a memorial speech for Chris Pike and countless other victims of Khan's mania. Jim had spent so much of his life hating the men who tried to tell him what to do, how to think, what he was capable of… Chris had been the first one to really punch through all that noise and reach him. Losing him had definitely changed Jim.

He was definitely not a fan.

So, when Diana asked him to transport Vanessa's body back to Themyscira on the _Enterprise_ so that she could give her a proper Amazonian funeral, he had reservations. Not about the request itself, but what he would do when they arrived back in the system.

It had taken three days to travel back from Earth to the Eos System after the initial investigations with Starfleet had been completed. In that time, Bones had run considerable scans on Diana, himself, and then Vanessa's entombed body. From the best the doctor could tell, he and Diana now shared the same balance of chroniton energy, and the same cellular scans showed similar regeneration properties in Jim's cells. Athena hadn't been speaking in metaphor.

During the scans, he had found a moment to explain to Diana what had happened during his brief death. She seemed… perturbed by his description of what Athena had told him. He wanted to ask her why she seemed so upset but it wasn't a can of worms he felt like opening at the moment. For all he knew, she might have just been upset about the funeral.

That thought made the immediate joy of realizing that he would be with Diana for… longer than he could really comprehend at this point fade, and another one sink in.

There would still be more funerals in his future. And not just as a Starfleet captain.

Perhaps it was the weight of that, a desire to feel connected and grounded by Diana in the wake of that knowledge, that made him ultimately decide that when they reached the planet, he would go with her. She didn't say anything one way or the other, and she had never asked. But, he had offered. After all, Vanessa's death was a burden they would both share.

After that particular decision had been made, Jim turned his full attention as the captain towards his Engineering staff. Scotty and Jaylah, using their combined knowledge, combed through all of the sensor data from the initial mission. By the time they were done giving Jim the full briefing in Stellar Cartography with the transporter logs, atmospheric breakdown, effect of the _Galileo's_ impulse engines and everything else, his head was spinning. Typically, he would have asked for the abbreviated version, but, he could tell that by letting Scotty and Jaylah talk through the whole thing, they could feel certain their method was sound. They couldn't risk breaking the atmospheric barrier again.

It turned out that without knowing it, Jim's actions on the _Galileo_ had been the key. In beaming Chekov and Sulu back from his shuttle while in the middle of the atmospheric barrier, Scotty could find a way to beam signals through without interrupting the barrier's delicate balance.

Spock had agreed as Jim announced he would be beaming down to the surface with Diana and Vanessa. Admiral Kent, who had in fact agreed to come aboard, would remain on the ship. Spock's reaction was met with a mixture of relief and slight concern on his part, but he knew there was nothing to fear on the planet. The Amazons had been nothing but gracious to him and they loved their queen. And in reality, he was there for her. Not as a captain, but as her partner in everything.

Upon their transport down, Diana must have appeared as any queen returned from conquest. She wore her black cloak and her armor, nothing that they had associated with the queen's garb, he was sure. But, they still rushed to her.

Diana didn't give anyone much opportunity to ask about what had transpired since she left. Kal-El had been clearly relieved to see her, but the moment he recognized Jim and noticed a body on a repulsor lift, he had nothing but questions. They were questions she was not in the mood to answer.

Not even Menalippe was able to drag anything out of her, as grateful as Diana clearly was to see her old friend. Instead, the Amazon queen simply stated that she had need for the sacred shrine of Persephone to cleanse a sister fallen in combat and to prepare for a funeral. Offerings would need to be prepared.

With that solemn note hanging over their heads, no one spoke to anyone after that. Jim shifted the lift to be between himself and Diana so they could both walk Vanessa to the shrine. The sun had risen, casting an orange hue over the capital as they walked. As they did so, Jim saw faces that he knew probably recognized him better than he could place them. He was the newcomer who had taken their queen. And now, they had returned with a fallen Amazon.

Much like any number of structures on Themyscira, once the great wooden doors closed behind them, the bustle and activity, even the sunlight seemed to leave them.

James Kirk had not exactly spent a lot of time looking up funerary rites for other cultures, especially the ancient Greeks, and yet… he subconsciously seemed to know what would happen next.

When Diana lit the first candle in the shrine, then used it to light three torches over a ritual altar clearly for the preparation of bodies, he began to understand. It wasn't subconscious; it was Diana. She knew what had to be done. That sense of purpose, of ritual, was bleeding over to him in the same way that he had sensed her exhaustion days before and little moments since. It wasn't all the time, and it wasn't invasive. It just… was. As their new reality, he would learn to grow accustomed to it.

Truth be told, time passed without meaning once they entered the shrine.

They didn't speak, save for the occasional soft words of prayer Diana muttered in her ancient tongue as she began the process of ritual cleansing. He didn't know how much he could - or should - participate, so Jim remained at arms' length, watching her work in the dim firelight to clean the now pale silver that encased the woman. Over and over again, she took the same care, the same elegant motions. She would take the sponge in the sacred basin of glowing water that ran through the island's caves, wring it out, then work head to toe to wash her.

It wasn't until Jim found himself handing her a small vase of sacred oil - a _lekythos_ \- that he realized she had silently invited him to take part in some small way. From there, he worked as her assistant. As Diana continued the ritual, he retrieved items wordlessly, already knowing their true names in the Themysciran tongue, until Vanessa's body was prepared. A wreath of flowers had been set upon her head and the fare to pay Charon, the Ferryman, tucked into the silks they wrapped her in.

When it was done, Diana took a deep breath, bracing her hands on the altar. She had been working for hours, at least it felt that way, and the torches had only slowly begun to warm the shrine with its lack of airflow. When she exhaled, he could hear her shake. Silently, he stepped forward and reached out to rest his hand on her back. He could barely begin to understand what she was truly going through, even with their sense of connection.

Funerals were sterile, distanced affairs on Earth now. This was deeply personal.

Diana nodded, as if his own thoughts had reached her, reminding her that she had to be strong for the rest of the ritual. She turned to face him, then hugged him, burying her face in his neck for a long moment as she simply breathed. Jim held her tight. After all, what else could he do?

Vanessa was gone. She was honoring her sister the only way she could. But, it didn't mean that Diana would be in any less pain for her loss.

Once she had taken a moment to steady herself, Diana pulled away. The queen he had met months ago, stoic and ready to uphold the traditions of her mother, reappeared. She stepped back, then disappeared into a dark corner of the shrine before returning with a pair of poles. She handed one to him, then took hold of the other and made her way over to the altar stone where Vanessa's body lay.

It was only when she began to thread the pole through a loop of fabric that he realized Diana had performed her work on a litter that would be used to carry her. Jim followed in suit, then caught her eye. He was strong, but carrying a body was not an easy task.

Nevertheless, the two of them picked Vanessa up at once and began to march back out the shrine. Pausing for a moment at the door, Diana stepped on one of the stones on the floor. The doors unlatched, then swung open so that they could continue.

What Jim saw when he stepped out onto the dirt road took his breath away.

For as far as he could see, in a great path leading up to the cliffs… it seemed like every citizen of Themyscira lined up along the road. Refugees, former Kandorians, Amazons themselves, all stood at attention along either side of the path. They stood at attention, ignorant to the wind blowing around them.

The entire island had come to honor a woman many of them had never even met. And the ones who _did_ know Vanessa… the Amazons were waiting at the end of the main road, weapons at the ready to salute. Spears, shields, swords, all were drawn and poised to honor their fallen sister.

Jim felt the weight of the litter adjust and turned to spot Kal-El at his side. His eyes were dark, mournful, somehow gentler than his son's and yet somehow older now. He took one of the poles from Jim as Menalippe also moved to assist Diana on her end.

From somewhere behind them, a drum began to beat. He understood the cadence. He knew a processional when he saw one, much less participated.

The foursome began their steady march down the road, heading towards the cliffs that were kissed by the sea and overlooked the great paradise that Kandorian technology had sent them to. No one spoke, but as the drums continued and they passed person after person dropping favors or throwing their first straight in the air in salute, Jim could feel his heart beginning to clench, throat threatening to close from the sheer weight of emotion around him.

Phillipus and Artemis waited for them at the end of the Amazons at attention. It wasn't until he noticed Kal-El handing over the litter that he understood that there were some duties that, even now, men could not have. He didn't blame them.

The Amazons had built their culture without men. They would bury their dead without them.

The litter continued forward and after a long moment, watching Kal for his cue, they followed after. Many of the people that Jim now knew to be descendants of misplaced refugees remained on the main road, never taking the trip up the hill. Yet, they were clearly versed in the culture they had assimilated into.

Jim could hear the cries to honor Vanessa Katalepis, Daughter of Euboea, Great Explorer, Great Scholar, over and over again from the crowd below as it caught on the wind carrying them up to the cliffs. Again, he swallowed down the grief that had begun to cling to him like the mist coming off of the sea down below.

Funerals just reminded people of the loss. Of the mistakes made, of the chances not taken. Yet, Diana was convinced.

As he reached the hill, the procession had come to a halt and the litter set down on what was clearly a recently prepared funeral pyre. He noted the amber glow beneath it. There were already coals, the fire was already started, only waiting for Vanessa.

When Diana started speaking, it honestly took him a moment to realize that his communicator had begun to translate from Koine. Belatedly, he found himself wishing he could hear her native tongue over the computer voice, so he reached into his pocket and turned the translation down to just a whisper.

After all, when a goddess spoke, he'd learned to listen.

"Hear me, Hera, O most powerful Queen of the Gods!" Diana began with a great shout, the words echoing in a way that suggested they would be carried off to the sky, to the gods themselves - wherever they were. Something told him that Athena, whatever, whoever she was… was listening. He wondered if she would be upset that Diana was still using the traditional queen of their people. After all, the Amazons didn't know. "Hear me, Athena, O Wise Patron! O Sovereign Patron! Hear me, Artemis, Great Huntress!" Diana raised her hands out to her sides, the black cloak billowing before her as if she could command the wind and seas herself. "Hear me, Persephone, Goddess of the Darkness! I am Diana, she who is Queen of the Amazons! Hear our most tragic suffering, our most pained grief for our fallen sister, for we have no words to describe her loss! Hear how our hearts bleed for her!"

Something started around him, something… truly extraordinary.

Jim had been present at ritual displays of grief. They tended to be more for the sake of ritual, more theatrical. But, around him…. Around him began a great wail. Amazons all around him began to wail, sobbing and keening. The sound began to swell, then carried back down to the capital below, ripped from the collective breast of the Amazon people. Their cries, raw and devastating, were returned on the wind, only serving to heighten the tide of emotion. They beat their chests with their fists, gripped a fistful of their hair and tugged, as if Diana's words had been true that their hearts bled and they were in _pain_.

But, of course they were. The Amazons all saw each other as sisters. And Vanessa was one of the youngest.

Jim found himself unable to swallow down that well of grief when he caught the silent tears falling from Kal's face. Blinking, Jim knew he couldn't bring himself to the kind of raw grief they felt, but…. He didn't bother to stop his own tears from falling.

"We pay the Ferryman for Vanessa Katalepis, O Gods! Prepare the way, and know that Cerberus himself will _tremble!_ " Diana shouted into the winds. The ritual wasn't just rote memorization for her. She knew the words, she _believed_ the words. "Hippolyta, welcome your subject! Antiope, welcome your pupil!" Diana's voice caught for a moment, but Jim couldn't see her expression to know precisely what she was thinking. She took a deep breath, then held her fist up to the sky. "Euboea, she who was first to die in Man's War to End All Wars -welcome your _daughter_!" The seas below seemed to rage in time with her with a sonorous crash against the cliffs. Salt and foam were cast over them all as if to baptize them. " _Behold! An Amazon comes to Elysium this day!_ "

The wails turned to the most ferocious battle cry Jim had ever heard in his life. The sound that tore from the chests of each of those warriors sent a shiver down his spine as they began to beat their shields and weapons together, screaming with the kind of ferocity that he had once seen centuries ago on the beaches, as Antiope led her forces on horseback against a foe they had never learned to retreat from.

The battle cries continued as Diana and Menalippe simultaneously reached out and gently pulled the poles from the litter. Vanessa's body dropped into the already glowing, stoked fire and disappeared.

The Amazons continued their cry, hoping their fury would terrify even the gods from interfering with Vanessa's paradise.

Vanessa Katalepis was truly home. No Borg, no Starro, no Cale, no more pain. She was honored. She was loved.

And the Amazons would be sure the gods knew as much.

* * *

Diana truly hoped that the gods had heard the battle cries of her fellow Amazons, of the beautiful coalition of new and old Themyscirans that had rose their voices as one to honor Vanessa. She hoped that their cries echoed through the cosmos until they reached Apollo's ears at his hidden temple on Delphi and Persephone herself visited Vanessa in the shared Elysium of great heroes.

After all, in many ways, Vanessa had been more of a hero than Diana had been for a time. She had not been an exceptional soldier, great diplomat or peacemaker. She had simply been willing to explore, to take a journey with people that were different, to use science and wisdom to temper man's passions. And for a time… it had worked.

Diana wondered what Starfleet's historical logs would say about her now. Would she be condemned to be a footnote in their archives with a simple note that she had become a foreign agent? She laughed a little to herself. More likely, the records would be full of redactions that made it impossible to read what had happened to her after the _Argentum Cygnus_ went missing.

Just as well.

Let the world remember Vanessa for who she had been, not what she had been forced into. That was how Diana had last seen her in Elysium, and it would remain so. She would forever be able to ride the crystal seas of those shores, much like the same sea Diana was now watching slowly roll out.

The Temple of Athena had been her mother's crowning achievement. Its columns rose towards the sky and the grounds went right to the cliffs. The goddess's statue overlooked the city as Diana now watched the sea. It had been a place of worship, of hope, for Diana for so many years, yet the goddess had never made herself known to her.

Diana frowned as she kept her eyes on the water ahead, but directed her words to the goddess in question. "I prayed to you for guidance and wisdom. For two _hundred_ years, I kept your fires lit myself. I tended your sacred birds, I made offerings, and I prayed to you. Every day." Diana had sensed the arrival of the Goddess of Wisdom, but did not turn to face her until she could be sure that her anger was tempered. It was not truly anger that she felt against Athena, rather sorrow. "Now, the moment I have stepped back on Man's World, seen what they were brought to, and finally ended Circe's manipulations… _now_ , you return."

Athena stood before her statue, yet somehow, she seemed greater and even more graceful than the marble twice her size. Her owl was perched on her shoulder, heather gray and sea blue robes billowing in the wind. She looked just the same as the last time Diana had seen her, back on Man's World in the 2040s. It only served to remind Diana that her anger and her sorrow were not misplaced.

"You could have stopped that war. _I_ could have stopped that war, if only you had come to me. I would have found a way to leave, to stop them from slaughtering millions and destroying everything the League worked for." Diana's voice caught for a moment as she realized Athena looked her in the eye, seemingly unfazed. Had she grown so deaf to the plight of mortals? Even if she had…. "What did I do for you to abandon me? To wish to see it all burn? How is that the goddess that my people call Patron?"

Athena's eyes, grey as the stormy seas, finally softened at Diana's more plaintive tone. When she finally spoke, there was the hint of a sigh, as if it hadn't occurred to her that Diana wouldn't naturally know her reasoning. "Sister… I could not have stopped that war. It was not to abandon you, but rather for mankind's greater purpose. There is wisdom in failure." Diana's stomach twisted as she recognized that in her newfound divinity, that had the ring of truth… but it felt sour. Knowing the Truth would not always be a comfort. "That conflict would have always come to pass, even if you had been there. And we could have lost you forever."

Diana's frown deepened. So, it had been true. Athena had moved the gods from Olympus, abandoning humanity to their own folly. "You don't know that. I could have - "

"I am the Goddess of Wisdom, but I am also a goddess of War." Athena rose a hand quickly to silence her. An Amazon first and an Olympian second, Diana's protests died on the wind as she found herself obeying the goddess. Standing straighter, Athena's spear summoned itself from the ether into her hand. In her other hand… the very sword of Athena that Diana had assumed was lost in the fires of Starfleet Headquarters. Her robes blew aside to reveal the aegis, the sacred goatskin shield adorned with the snakes of a gorgon from ancient conflict. "My aegis has been scarred by swords, taken the blows of spears. So, _yes_ , I do know when man's passions will end in conflict. And in this case, it was necessary. _That_ is why I did not come to you, Diana. You would have wanted to stop it, or help them rebuild in the aftermath. But, you could not be the one to create their new world. Only they could."

"Then the Justice League meant nothing?" Diana spat, only to realize that she did not like the acidic edge of her own tongue. She took a deep breath, shaking her head in apology before she continued. "Forgive me, Athena, but… you abandoned them. For a new people. And that was not Zeus's machination, that was _yours_. Apollo stated as much. And that is all the more puzzling, because he was the one I would have expected it from. But, not you." Diana swallowed thickly as she thought of the scars Conner would carry with him in his heart for the rest of his lives. "The very goddess who asked me to become the Champion of the Gods… Never you. "

Athena's sword and spear disappeared as quickly as they arrived. Instead, the goddess approached her, reaching her hands out to Diana. When she didn't immediately move towards her, she sighed and instead motioned for her to join her at the small bench overlooking the water.

They had spent many years in such counsel. Athena had always said she preferred to speak to Diana as an equal, not a supplicant. It seemed that had not changed. And for the first time, Diana felt perhaps that was for the best. Maybe she would finally get answers.

"Diana…" Athena said softly, her name a sigh as they looked out at the tide pulling further out. "I wish I had the words to make all of this easier. But, I do not, for this was no easy choice. I can only tell you why I made the choices I did and hope that you will understand."

"Not just about humanity," Diana turned to face her, brow still furrowed with her troubles. "What you have done to Steve… to Jim…. that was not your decision to make. You had no right - "

"Have you become one of the Fates in my absence, Diana, that you so well know how the shears must cut?" Athena asked with more than a hint of amusement. In that moment, Diana found herself blushing with embarrassment. It had been a long time since she'd been shamed by her patron as well. "Steven Trevor was a good man, cut down before his time, in service to you. Neither of you knew your true heritage, but he knew that he could make the sacrifice you should not." Diana noted Athena's careful turn of phrase, one that Diana had thought herself. It wasn't that she couldn't have gotten on that plane… but, she could not be everywhere at once. "You do not like to receive gifts because you feel that you are not worthy. And that is admirable, but largely untrue."

Diana opened her mouth to protest, but Athena simply rested her hand on her arm to stop her.

"You know I speak Truth. You are the authority on such things now, so you must learn to be more honest, even in your humility." Athena's amusement faded as Diana's expression did not change. She was still waiting for an answer. "I made the choice I did because humanity did not need us. They were destined for a greater purpose. The Justice League was a noble beginning, but you cannot expect the weakest to raise themselves higher if the paragons they trust never make them. And they barely knew of our existence. They knew _you_ , Diana, but the League was the new pantheon. When we left, their belief in us had already begun to wane. But, there would be no new moon to restore us. And Zeus would not listen."

Diana caught the dark edge to Athena's voice at the mention of her absentee father, even when he was alive. She recalled what Jim had told her of his dance with death. "You told Jim that you were now Queen of the Gods."

Athena nodded. "Zeus believed that humanity would believe in him once more, if given enough time. But, he did not want to interfere with their affairs. When Themyscira vanished, it greatly weakened him." It made sense. The Amazons still believed in him, even if they did not respect him as much as the goddesses. "I led the rest of the gods to new peoples, in the hope that we could extend our time. But, he could not adapt to the changes. I do not know if he lives, but I do know he abdicated to me. And I have since led the gods in our efforts across the stars to coach new races, nurture them to their potential."

Diana thought of Khitomer and the last god she had met. "So, you gave the Klingons Ares to deal with?"

Athena chuckled, shaking her head. "Ares has made his own bed. I do not control what my brother does, nor should you." It was the bitter chuckle of a woman who knew the same truth as Diana - one did not kill Ares… they outplayed him in the gambit for peace. "But, this was all done for a reason. I could see that humanity would outgrow gods. Eventually, those who were exceptional would need to be integrated into society, not held above them or demanding to rule." It was clear that they both knew who she meant. Diana hoped that wherever Khan had been sent to, he would never return. Cale's legacy would end after this. "Sometimes, Empires must fall for new Republics to rise. And as I told James, you do not need to rule above them, Diana. You do not need their worship, you will never know its pull as we have." Athena reached out and rested her hand on the other woman's arm. "You can continue to be one of them. That is what they need. They need a peer who will guide their hands and hearts. You and James can do that now."

Diana took a deep breath, trying to process what the goddess was trying to tell her. On the one hand, it was so… profoundly Olympian and god-like for Athena not to tell Diana her plan until its completion. It also meant that on some level, Athena had always hoped for Zeus's power. "What have you done to Jim… exactly? I know what he told me, but… I must hear it from you." She turned to look at her. "You made him Champion of the Gods."

"Yes, but in truth, he is champion of one god: You. Diana, the Risen Goddess of Truth." Athena smiled. "You will perform wonders, Diana. You will lead them to a new horizon, past even greater enemies than Circe or Cale. But…" Standing, the goddess strode from the seaside viewpoint to face the city below. Diana followed. "I knew that your destiny would be a lonely one. And loneliness… it changes us. You knew it yourself. Here, on Themyscira, among your people, you never let yourself love, to have an equal partner that knew you in a way even Kal-El could not." Athena pointed a singular finger down towards the ground. To Jim, who was talking with Menalippe, clearly explaining some tale of their exploits. Somehow, even her stern advisor and old friend was amused by the tale. "He has complimented you in every way that you need. And this time, I could ensure that he would lead a life more in a land of milk and honey than of rocks and bramble."

"He lost his father at birth," Diana said, voice heavy. "That is not a land of milk and honey."

"' _Life kills life all the time. So, the goddess kills herself in the sacrifice of her own animal,'"_ The words were well-known to Diana. They were inscribed on the Sword of Athena. "Life must pay for life. Guinan told you the same."

Guinan's cryptic warning on the bridge of the _Enterprise_ had followed Diana for months, but she had never let herself wonder what that meant. Now, she understood. "George Kirk. Christopher Pike. Vanessa." She glanced over at Athena. "Every time Jim was… altered by the gods, you took the life of another to forge him into a new man."

Athena held her hand up to correct her. "The Fates had already chosen that their threads would be cut. I did not ask them to spin those moments into James's life, nor could I. I am not omniscient, Diana, and neither are they. But, it was not in vain. Do not look at life in terms of those lost. Think of those who are yet to come, who will see what good you can bring."

Diana glanced down at Jim, still smiling and genuinely amusing her aunt. It had been so long since Menalippe had truly smiled, yet… she seemed as if a weight had been lifted somehow.

"You see it now, don't you?" Athena simply breathed, clearly watching him as well. "He is in need of no power, Diana. He needs only to be himself."

The thought made Diana scoff, albeit in genuine amusement. "Doctor McCoy and I would both agree that is more dangerous than giving him Zeus's thunderbolt."

Athena laughed softly. The sound, coupled with the new understanding of his fate, began to finally help Diana come to grips with the events of the past. It was true: mortals died. Sometimes, there was no way to save them. She had never met Chris Pike or George Kirk. Yet, their impact on Jim was more profound than she ever could have expected. She wondered if Guinan knew from her knowledge of those… possible timelines, decisions made differently, if Diana ever would have met Jim had those two not set him on the course of a young, adventurous and devil-may-care captain.

"Let yourself be happy, Diana. Enjoy the gift of the gods, enjoy the life you wanted to live with James Kirk. I cannot bring any of those lives back, but I can honor Vanessa's..." Athena's voice seemed to carry on the wind. Diana could sense what was occurring, and turned to look.

"How?" Diana's question died on her lips.

Athena was already gone. Of course.

Sighing, she turned her attention back to the courtyard down below, wondering what next mystery she would be presented with.

She wasn't sure if it was better that instead of a mystery, Menalippe had caught sight of her and was waving her down. There were still two more matters that had to be resolved before she could turn attention back to the galaxy at large.

Diana made her way down from the Temple with ease. As she did so, she pulled her communicator and asked that the bridge send down the remaining crewmember she had requested. Now that the _Enterprise_ knew how to tap into the subspace relays on the planet, communication had come through quite clearly.

"My queen," Menalippe said with a smile, saluting her for a moment. Whatever story Jim had been telling was no longer of interest, but he seemed to take it in stride. Behind the other amazon, he simply smiled at her and motioned to the approaching Kryptonian on his right. "I had hoped that your counsel with Athena would have eased your mind."

Diana tilted her head from side to side, as if debating that very conclusion. "I'm not sure it eased my mind, but I have the answers I seek."

"That's good to hear," Kal chipped in as he reached them. "I'm just sorry you returned under such circumstances. Captain Kirk has been giving us the cliffnotes version of what you've gone through. Sounds like quite the adventure."

She nodded. "It has been." Biding her time, she motioned to a scroll in Kal's hand. "Is that what I think it is?"

Kal handed it over to her with a curt nod. "It is. Vanessa's cremation is complete, and we've taken the metal to Io for crafting. She's going to mold it into her pillar and imprint that on the front."

Raising an eyebrow, Diana unrolled the scroll so she could see the work of their master blacksmith. A swell of emotion struck faster than she was able to compensate for it, her eyes warming, but not with grief. Instead, it was in relief and gratitude for her sisters. "This is beautiful…" She breathed. "And will honor her well." Amazon customs dictated that the cremated remains of the fallen be placed into an amphora and buried. Then, a funeral pillar would be set upon it.

Jim was the one to finally speak to the design, the slight smile on his face indicating he understood its value as much as she did. "A swan… At least, it can be a symbol of her salvation, not her downfall."

She looked up at him, smiling a bit as he took the words right out of her mouth. She could see what Athena meant, although she suspected she always had known it. Jim Kirk was her equal now, and the two of them had countless opportunities to learn how this even more in depth connection would work. How many sentences would they finish for each other? How many jokes would they try to beat each other to?

Menalippe seemed to sense the moment, though, and couldn't help but interject with the question she had expected all along. "Now that the funeral rites have been attended to, will you be staying?"

"No, my friend." Diana reached out to rest her hand on her mentor's shoulder. She had been her best companion on Themyscira, but she had never wished for more than the protection of their people. She would understand best of them all. "I must go back. The galaxy… has grown much larger since we were once a people of Earth. And Themyscira will eventually play a part in all of that. I would rather be out there, representing our people while you and the Senate continue here." She glanced over to Kal. "With your help."

Kal frowned, crossing his arms over his chest. They had had the argument countless times before, but now, she would not take no for an answer.

Even if those were the first words out of his mouth.

"No, Diana. I told you, it's not the place for me anymore." Kal grumbled.

Behind Jim, she heard and saw the transporter shimmer. "I thought that would be your answer, and your wife wanted me to tell you for a fact that it was time to stop running." She glanced back up at him. "But, in case you needed a reminder…" She reached out and slowly took Kal's arm, guiding him to turn. "There is someone who would very much like to see you."

Conner Kent stood in his Admiral's uniform, but looked more like the young boy she'd watched grow into a hero in his own right. With one hand stuffed in a pocket, he waved with the other. The yellow sunlight he had exposed himself to in his armor had given him years back. Finally, the father and son looked as they should.

Kal's voice actually trembled when he breathed. "Conner?"

Conner smiled. "Hi, dad." Taking a few tentative steps closer, he held a hand out as if to shake. "I was hoping we could catch up."

With a burst of speed Diana hadn't seen in years, Kal-El was gone from her side. And he was holding his son's face in his hands, looking him over with the biggest "farmboy" grin she had seen in centuries.

 _Oh, thank you, Diana…_ Lois's voice struck her so hard that tears fell.

As the sound of Kal hugging his son filled her ears, babbling a million things he'd left unsaid for years, Diana wiped her eyes and allowed herself to smile.

 _You are very welcome, sister_ , She thought, knowing that somehow, in that paradise she had briefly touched, Lois was watching.

She caught Jim's eye for a moment. He was watching her with that same expression she'd noted over two lifetimes. It was that look that said, _Well, if she's smiling, then everything will be fine._

And he was right. Everything would be fine.

* * *

 _Captain's Log, Stardate 2264.116_

 _After what has proven to be an enlightening and emotional experience for Ambassador Prince, Admiral Kent and the people of Themyscira, the_ Enterprise _has concluded her rendezvous with the planet. We put one of their people to rest and have gained a new passenger for transport back to the_ Yorktown _._

 _It is not lost on me that when we first came to this planet months ago, I thought the trajectory of my career and our deep space mission seemed set. The rhythm I had so desperately hated had become a comfort. My only worries would have been what I planned to do after the mission was over. Would I be given command of the_ Enterprise _again? Would some admiral or commodore start pushing that I move into the Vice Admiralty position I'd flirted with?_

 _Now, if I am to believe the impossible, my career is going to be a lot longer than I thought. How much longer, I can't say, but learning there's no expiration date on one's life tends to get the mind moving._

 _I've never professed to be a man of faith. As a general rule, I have faith that my gambles will pay off, that my luck will hold out, that my crew will come through. My faith in Diana… that's been something else entirely._

 _I never thought I'd find something that would give me pause, make me wonder what happens beyond the chair. I had flirted with the idea, allowed my melancholy to dictate my actions, but with the help of a few well-placed words of wisdom, I've come through that. But, if I'm truly… immortal - it's hard to even say now - then I guess the real question is…. What does this mean? Who is Jim Kirk going to be fifteen years from now or fifty?_

 _While I have a whole host of new quandaries to consider, I have nothing but time to do it. And I know one thing: there is no part of this equation that doesn't include Ambassador Prince._

 _Not exactly the most professional note to end a Captain's Log on, but nothing about the last few months has been impartial or stoic. Guess I'll just have to get used to it._

* * *

By the time Jim Kirk finally breezed back into his quarters, he was both pleasantly surprised and nervous to find Diana already there. Not that she made him nervous, but this conversation had been long overdue, and Jim had been hoping he could have started it off the way he planned.

Naturally, his crew had other priorities than their captain's love life for the moment, especially since as far as all of them were concerned, he had no reason to rush.

Given how she was seated on his couch, though, he had a feeling she had only recently arrived and was deep in thought.

"Sorry I'm late," He said as he crossed the distance between them and leaned over to kiss her on the head. The moment she turned to face him, that smile of hers he loved so much appeared. He practically floated to the couch instead of his normal flop. "Bones was determined to run at least one more scan before we left orbit. He's greatly put out by the very notion that Athena thought I was "wise" enough to warrant immortality." He shook his head, chuckling at the lecture he'd literally walked out of in order to make it back to his quarters. "If I took him more seriously, I'd think he was personally offended."

She chuckled and leaned back a bit so she could face him more. "Maybe he's just put out that now you have ample excuses to ignore his medical advice when he tells you not to go on away missions."

The two of them hadn't had many quiet moments like this since they'd left Earth for Themyscira. He found himself thinking of their drinks on the observation lounge. He was pretty sure he'd started to fall for her then, long before he knew what that would mean for him. Everything about her carried weight, carried purpose and grace.

Like usual, Jim felt like he didn't know how he'd gotten here.

"That is such a turn on, you know that?" He finally blurted, only to realize from the arch of her brow that he had given no explanation for his inner monologue. "Just… the way you talk about the impossible as it's already yesterday's news, or standard protocol. Nothing ever fazes you."

Diana smile grew warmer, clearly amused by him. "Believe me, I've been fazed before. If I had not been in the midst of…" She hesitated, as if the words still seemed foreign to her. "Attaining my godhood, I would have been beside myself that you were gone."

"So, I pale in comparison to cosmic power, is that it?" He teased.

Diana patted his cheek gently, as if to scold him. "Of course not. But, I could still sense that you were connected to me. It was something that I'd begun to feel over the months, but never to that extent. I simply knew you would return."

"So did Athena. The only one who didn't know was me, apparently." Jim said as he was reminded a little more forcefully of his conversation with the goddess. His stomach turned a little as he realized they were already heading into the territory he knew he needed to discuss with her, but didn't know how she'd take it.

"I mentioned my displeasure to Athena as well, that she was taking both of our lives into her hands and dictating them," She said, an edge of annoyance back in her voice. "But, as she pointed out, I do not accept gifts from the gods very often."

"To be fair, I apparently asked." He conceded. "I just didn't remember."

"Oh, good, so we agree it's your fault." Diana teased him before he could walk back his statement.

"Okay, now, see, that's not fair - " He began.

"No, no, it's your fault." She said, laughing as he tried to pull her closer. "You've admitted it now, so I have until eternity to tease you over…" Diana's laugh faded a bit as the elephant in the room came back up again. "That."

Silence fell between them. It would probably be a while before they could joke about what had happened without being constantly reminded of the price it took.

"Look, I want to ask you something, but…" Jim slowly pulled free and stood. "I think we need a bit of a pick-me-up before I get serious." Diana tilted her head and made a move to follow him. "No, stay put. I'll be right back."

When he returned, his nervousness that Diana had already scoped out what he'd planned disappeared from the look of sheer glee on her face. "Ice cream!"

Grinning, he set two bowls of clotted cream ice cream down in front of her on the coffee table. "I would love to take credit for getting this because I knew we were about to have a rough week, but I'd actually just been trying to get this requisitioned for a while. But, ice cream from the United Kingdom requires that we can pick up on Earth."

Diana's eyes widened as she took the bowl. "Are you saying this is…"

"Devon clotted cream ice cream." Jim said, a bit proud of himself. "Took me about a month to remember what flavor you had at that train station."

She looked from him to the bowl of ice cream, then back up to him as she went to get a spoonful. "You didn't have to - "

"Yes, I did." He simply replied. "That's one of those memories that I have been able to hold onto all this time." To think, he'd been trying to take her to get ice cream every single time they'd been on _Yorktown_ station, even before he had known just how deep their connection had gone. If he was going to dump his concerns on her, the least he could do was make sure she had something to make her smile in spite of it.

Diana took a bite and moaned softly, leaning back in the seat. "It's just like I remember…" She breathed, lost for a moment in the nostalgia.

After he realized he'd been watching a little too long, he smiled. "Good, because if I had been wrong, this would have been a bit awkward..."

She went to take another bite, but hesitated. Like usual, she could see right through him. "Right now, the only thing I find awkward is that you're clearly dancing around something. Just ask me, whatever it is. Don't start holding back now."

He sighed, nodding as his stomach rolled a bit unpleasantly. "You're right. I just…." He found himself thinking back to why Athena had kept everything from him until he had literally died protecting Diana. "I know this whole… immortality thing is normal for you, but it's not for me. And I'm already starting to realize what Athena meant when she said that it came with a burden."

She set her ice cream aside, leaning forward towards him. "The funeral." She simply stated, cutting to the heart of the issue with ease.

Jim nodded as he reached up to massage the back of his neck, although out of nerves or habit he wasn't sure. "I've always expected I'd go before anyone else. Even my mom. The job isn't without risks - hell, we _just_ proved that. But… at some point, I have to... " Jim trailed off as he thought of Bones, of Spock, of Uhura… they'd been with him for years, through the academy. He'd never considered what his life would have been like without them. "I have to say goodbye." He finished in a rush.

Diana reached out to rest her hand on his, but he pulled back a little, aware that he was a bit too keyed up to really accept comfort before he got his worries off his chest.

"And don't - _please_ don't misunderstand, Diana," Jim said, pressing his hands together in front of him as he tried to make sense of what hardly an easy question. "I am not saying I regret this, or that I'd rather you shoulder this burden alone, but... " He reached up to brush an errant lock of hair out of his eyes as he looked up at her. "I am _terrible_ at losing people. I thought you were gone for a hot second and I nearly lost my mind. If Scotty hadn't shown up when he did, I probably would have panicked. Because, that's what I do. I panic, or I lash out, or I make decisions to try to reorient everyone else in my life so they won't leave. But, that's not really an option anymore, is it?" He scoffed. As if controlling others' lives had ever really been an option. "I don't know how to do this part. I am…" This time, when Diana slipped her hand to his cheek, he didn't fight it. Being able to voice the concern, like so many other demons, seemed to help take away the power it held. And her touch was helping ground him by the moment. "I am so grateful that I can be with you forever, because we _fit_. But… I don't know how I'm supposed to handle saying goodbye to everyone and everything eventually."

Diana's other hand came up to cup his cheek, thumbs brushing against his cheekbones with delicate, fluttering touches. "Jim, having practice doesn't necessarily make it any easier for me, either. _This_ is why I never would have asked this of the gods. It's one thing to ask for a physical reward that doesn't affect anyone, but this… this absolutely effects you."

Jim leaned into her touch, feeling even more like a tool for complaining at the slightly guilty tone in her voice. "I swear, I am not trying to be ungrateful and I am not about to trade eternity with you just so I can sleep a little better at night…."

"We mourn the loss of people because of their impact in our lives. When I lost you the first time, it had a profound effect on everything, just as losing Antiope did." Diana continued on, not in the least bit discouraged by his melancholy. "And then came Charlie, Etta, Samir… I started to grow more used to the idea that people do not stay with us forever. But, I tried not to see it as a final endpoint, rather as when friendships take divergent paths. That is how I prepared for it." She gently steered his head up until he was forced to open his eyes and look at her. "But, I can tell you that until my brush with death… I never felt any sort of peace. I had to take comfort in the knowledge that my loved ones no longer suffered, and even then, that feels like a hollow promise."

He sat up a little straighter. "But, you went through that funeral, you tortured yourself trying to prepare Vanessa - "

"Because I wanted to honor her." Diana smiled a bit, as if she was recalling a memory he unfortunately knew nothing about. "She was already in Elysium. I saw her there before I ascended. Being there, seeing everyone, knowing that they are truly not gone, not just taking it on faith, it finally brought me comfort." He felt her fingers slip down to his arm, then to find his hand, lacing their fingers together easily. "The funeral rites are not there for the dead, Jim. There are there to honor their impact among the living. But, we don't need to mourn them."

Jim tilted his head, trying to take all of that in. "What are you… I'm not sure I follow."

"I know things," Diana squeezed his hand gently. "I can do things that I couldn't before. While I have been able to steady and control some of that new awareness, I know it's still there, simmering within. And you and I have both seen the wonders of the Nexus, seen that the soul is truly everlasting in a timeless place after death. We won't be alone. We will know they are in Elysium, and with time… I think I could reach the Nexus as Apollo did."

Jim's eyes widened, mouth slightly agape as he realized what she was telling him. "You think you can… visit the Nexus. When you want to."

" _We_ can." Diana said softly.

Without thinking, Jim found himself thinking of Athena's words regarding the unique way his immortality had been earned. "Right. Because where you go, I go."

She smiled, pulling him closer. "Yes. And I'm going to hold you to that now more than ever…" Before Jim could offer a snappy comeback, Diana stole a kiss, leaving the lingering flavor of cream and sugar on his lips.

It was a remarkably domestic thing, not exactly where he thought his life as a Starfleet captain would have taken him. He could feel the love in her touch, each caress. His worries melted away as he was profoundly reminded that when it came to Diana, loving her would always be more than enough.

He could definitely enjoy more domestic things, wholly unexciting and without interruption.

Jim's communicator chirped in his pocket. _I jinxed myself…_ he thought as the two of them pulled away enough for him to pull the device free.

"Kirk here," He said, even as he gave Diana a sidelong, suffering glance.

" _Captain,"_ Spock began, impassive and stoic as always. _"We have spotted an unusual stellar phenomenon and are dropping out of warp to perform a brief astronomical survey. Admiral Kent had no objections regarding his timeline."_

Jim didn't bother to hide the massive roll of his eyes at his First Officer checking the ranking Admiral's schedule before even bothering to let him know he wanted to stop the ship. "I'm glad you checked the admiral's timetable, Mister Spock." Jim shot back in a not-so-subtle jab. "I suppose a pitstop won't hurt. What have you found?"

" _We're not entirely certain, however, we have a number of theories. Ensign Jaylah has calculated that the most aesthetically pleasing vantage point of the phenomena will be from the starboard observation lounge, should you wish to view it without all of the scientific apparatus."_

Genuinely amused by what he could sense was at least one backhanded mention of the new scientific equipment that Spock had still never fully tested out, Jim winked at Diana before he replied back. "Well, if Ensign Jaylah took the time to map out what's aesthetically pleasing, who are we to argue? Thank you again. Curious as to what you find. Kirk out."

Flipping his communicator closed, Jim had just long enough to put it away before the ship dropped out of warp and the bubble outside his windows was replaced by a starscape.

"What's that about?" Diana asked as Jim stood.

"I haven't the slightest, but we're about to find out." He said quickly, reaching out to help her up, if she desired. "Ready to go see?"

Diana took his hand and let him swing her to her feet, but her attention was immediately back on the coffee table. "You know, I think I want to take my ice cream - "

"Ooooh, no." Jim said with a grin, pulling her closer to him so she didn't go grab for it. "I'll put it back in the freezer."

"The observation lounge is a perfectly fair place to eat ice cream," She protested, but made no move to get out of his grasp.

"Sure, if I knew it would just be the two of us." Sidestepping away, he grabbed the bowls and made his way back over to his captain's galley. "But, do you have any idea the kind of hell I'd catch if we brought ice cream and didn't have enough for everyone else?" He returned in time to grab Diana's jacket at the couch and hand it to her. "They're like a bunch of kids at summer camp."

"Then, you already have an adequate understanding of what it will be like to teach at Starfleet Academy, I imagine." She said as she shrugged her jacket back on and zipped it up. "As I'm sure you'll be asked to do that after the next tour or so."

Jim was sure to give her a sufficiently insulted look before he followed her out the door. "How _dare_ you. The day I teach in one of those stuffy classrooms is the day you take me to Atlantis."

"Deal." She said, never missing a beat as they headed to the turbolift.

Jim couldn't help but smile as he watched her walk ahead of him.

"I love you," He said, clearly amused by her.

Diana glanced back and flashed him a grin that made him temporarily forget where they were going. "And I love you. Forever."

Forever was going to be _nice_.

* * *

As it turned out, they had not been the only ones to receive Spock's recommendation for viewing the stellar phenomena. When Diana arrived in the lounge, Jim in tow and still teasing her as they traded what they thought would be the most boring jobs they could have in Starfleet, she spotted Conner and Kal at the bar, the two of them talking softly and chuckling over some anecdote they were sharing.

"Kal…" Diana said warmly, walking over to pat his back affectionately. "I've hardly seen the two of you since we arrived back on the ship. I trust that you've had a good time?"

Kal glanced over at her, smiling that dopey farmboy grin that she had grown to miss so very much. "This is a ship of dreams. And Conner and I have had a lot to catch up on, so… sorry I haven't been terribly social."

"You don't have to apologize, Kal." She said with a smile. "You've had to wait a long time to see each other. I'm just glad you came aboard."

"So am I." Jim piped up from behind Diana as he reached across the bar to pull a bottle of scotch and two highball glasses. "The Admiral's been far less of a sourpuss since the two of you reconnected."

Conner's unenthused look Jim's direction made the whole group laugh, but he simply replied with, "Be careful I don't demote you, Kirk."

"You'd never do that, you don't want to have to find my replacement." Jim said, never missing a beat as he poured a couple of drinks.

"You're right. Besides, dad and I will need to figure out how to trade off with the suit again." Conner said with a pointed glance at Diana. "Seems silly that the world should only have one Superman."

Diana turned to look at Kal, honestly speechless. For centuries, he had been unwilling to go home, to reclaim the legacy he had made. And now, both of them were ready to usher in a new age. Together.

The doors to the lounge opened behind them once more. Diana turned, wondering who else was joining them, only to find that it was majority of the senior staff. Doctor McCoy, Lieutenants Uhura and Sulu, Ensign Jaylah and Commander Spock.

The new arrivals were not lost on Jim, either. Narrowing his eyes at the group, he motioned between them and simply asked, "Is there _anyone_ on the bridge right now?"

"Chief Engineer Scott requested a brief turn at the conn for the purposes of this survey," Spock replied. "I saw no harm in granting the request."

"Really?" Jim chuckled. "Well, good for him." Now that there were others in the lounge, he was now retrieving and filling more glasses for those who were interested. Without trying, an impromptu social gathering had cropped up, even though Diana still didn't know what precisely they were there for.

"Jaylah," Diana asked, going directly to the source. "What are we about to see?"

She had clearly just been waiting for the opportunity to say what she had found. Quickly, she made her way over to the viewport and motioned to the bright mass to everyone's left. It was covered in a haze of what seemed to be space matter of some kind. "Any minute now, it should finish burning off the excess."

"What is burning off excess?" Jim asked as he followed Diana and Jaylah to the viewport.

"What Ensign Jaylah is trying to hold back for dramatic tension is that you are witnessing the birth of a star, Captain." Spock said, stealing the thunder from the younger ensign much to her chagrin.

Yet, Diana was enthralled. Of all the wonders she had seen in her life, she had never bore witness to the birth of one of the greatest cosmic forces in the universe.

The haze burned off around the bright light and the viewport immediately compensated by shading the windows.

"It is now a star." Jaylah said with a grin. "We could have been flying all our lives and never seen this."

"That does seem like a one-in-a-million kind of thing," McCoy said, although Diana could tell he wasn't sure if he liked those odds or hated them.

"So, if we saw it first, that means we get to name it, right?" Jim asked the room as he sipped his drink.

"I believe so, although you may find yourself arguing for the position with Mister Scott," Spock said wryly.

"I don't he'll object to it." Casually, Jim slipped his arm around Diana's shoulders and pulled her a little closer. "Given where we are right now, we're on a pretty direct trajectory for Messier 29, right?" He glanced back at Spock. "My stellar cartography is kind of rusty, but that sounds right." His first officer nodded, but Diana found herself wondering what exactly he had up his sleeve. "Then, it would be part of the constellation of Cygnus back on earth." He glanced down at Diana. "So, Vanessa would be a good name, don't you think?"

Diana's eyes widened as she considered his proposal. She nodded, trying to figure out how to thank him, but she found her throat had closed up again. It wasn't necessarily because of his suggestion, but rather the way he had come to it.

The gods had honored great heroes in many ways over the centuries, but there was one honor as sacred as the right of godhood itself.

 _Thank you, Athena…_

Vanessa had received the blessing of the gods. She would be forever immortalized in the heavens, as Orion or Heracles themselves.

As Jim hugged her a little tighter, Diana leaned against him and allowed herself to take stock in those blessings she had received. It was true, she had always sought to be worthy of the blessings from the gods, of the gifts she received.

But, now, more than anything, she was grateful for them.

All those years ago when she had rescued Steve Trevor from the wreckage of a German biplane, she had no way of knowing the great destiny she had been set upon. She had only been a princess helping a spy to save people against a war. Since then, she had been many things: teacher, civilian, hero, soldier, leader, and Queen. But, she had always done so without her family, without Steve, and over time, without the friends that had pulled her out of the shadows.

For the first time since leaving Themyscira in 1918, with Jim's warm embrace and the mutually astonished voices of the crew around her, Diana was no longer alone.

And she never would be again.

* * *

 **Author's Note:**

We have officially reached the conclusion of _Star Trek: Age of Wonder_ and I can't believe it's here. When I came up with this concept, it was after having seen _Wonder Woman_ about 5 times and falling in love with the crazy idea that Steve Trevor's reincarnation could be none other than James T. Kirk from the Kelvin timeline. As a lifelong comics fan (DC and Marvel), as well as having been raised literally from birth as a Trekkie, this was just going to be a fun labor of love for me to write a few episodes and play in this world. But, I realized very quickly this wasn't a small project, and I don't know if you've noticed, but in 6 months, I've written over 300,000 words, the volume of 3 books.

And I certainly would never have gotten this far, or been able to finish it without the amazing support and love from all of you readers. And I also want to thank my wife, who was both my beta and my story collaborator. A lot of what you guys love she helped me tie together and allowed me to talk her ear off for hours as I worked through how precisely Cale survived the Eugenics War and how to drop hints of Cale's involvement in Starfleet, up to and including kidnapping Jaylah, without giving it all away too soon. So, thank you, Kris, I love you and you're awesome for indulging me on the insane manic pace and schedule I held myself to make sure I never missed a day I wanted to publish and never got off-track.

Also, thank you, Patty Jenkins, Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, Simon Pegg, J.J. Abrams, Karl Urban and the rest of those involved with Star Trek and Wonder Woman for making me want to write this. I haven't taken on a project this big _ever_ and I feel amazing for it. And thanks, creative commons licenses for existing so I can write fanfiction.

As of right now, I'm prepping a small follow-up to this fic that will be known as Ambassador's Logs: Supplemental. When that goes up, you'll be able to find missing scenes, extra stories and maybe even a full episode or two. That won't have a timed schedule, but you can always expect a random surprise of me dropping fun stuff from this and from beyond. I have some new ideas for my next fics, but I don't know if anything will ever be as long or make me quite as proud as this fic has.

If you've never left me a comment, please drop me a line when you finish, even if it's a just a quick wave. I'd love to know you read it, if you liked it, and tell me what you liked. Or scream at me in keyboard smash, I'm fine with that, too.

I hope you all enjoyed entering this Age of Wonder.

I know I did. I was happy to be allowed to play here for a while.

Thanks.

\- Cassie (Tumblr: RobinsGirlWonder)


End file.
